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 25outon'3S 3Ilrcljatc Itibrarp

VOL. II.

SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE
OF

ANCIENT ART AND MYTHOLOGY

Soor^'a.
 THE

SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE
OF

ANCIENT ART
AND

MYTHOLOGY
AN INQUIRY

]'.Y

Richard Payne Knight, Esq.

AUTHOR OF
'THE WORSHIP OF PRIAPUS," ETC.

A NEW EDITION
WITH INTRODUCTION, ADDITIONS, NOTES TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
AND A NEW AND COMPLETE INDEX

By ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.

W7//; 34s Illustrations by A. L. Rawson

NEW YORK
J. W. BOUTON, 8 WEST 28TH STREET
i8q2

IT
 K7I

i]

Copyright, 1891

Ev J. W. BOUTON

46e Cavfon (JJtciiC

171. 173 Macdougal Street, New V'>r)<

 Groups 01 Gods and Goddesses before Proserpine.

PREFACIv

The original edition of this worlc was privately printed by

the author at London, in the year 1818. It had not been

designed by him for a treatise by itself, as appears from the

following notice on the title-page, namely :

" Intended to be prefixed to the Second Volume of the

'
Select Specimens of Ancient Sculpture^ published by the
Society of Dilettanti but the necessarily slow progress ot
;

that work, in the exhausted state of the funds to be applied

to it, affording the author little probability of seeing its com-
pletion, he has been induced to print a few copies of this pro-
posed Part of it, that any information which he may have been
able to collect upon a subject so interesting to all lovers of
Elegant Art, may not be lost to his successors in such pur-
suits, but receive any additions and corrections which may
render it more worthy to appear in the splendid form, and
with the beautiful Illustrations of the preceding volume."
Afterward, with Mr. Knight's consent, the " Inquiry " was
reprinted, in continuous portions, in the Classical Journal. It

was published a third time, in 1836, by a London House,

having been edited for the purpose, by E. H. Barker, Esq., a
gentleman of superior literary endowments. The demand
for it among scholars and persons of culture, has exhausted
the edition which was necessarily limited and copies are now;

difficult to procure.
Richard Payne Knight was one of the most thorough
scholars of the earlier period of the present century. His
works display profound judgment, discrimination, taste, acute-
ness and erudition, united with extraordinary candor and im-
partiality; and they constitute an invaluable collection ot
ancient and curious learning, from which the students of such
literature can draw abundant supplies. In these respects,
they stand side by side with the writings of the late Godfrey
5
iv Preface.

Higgins ; while they excel in respect to scope, accuracy,

conciseness, and the arrangement of subjects. They are of
untold value for the unfolding of correcter views of Ancient
Mythology than have been commonly entertained. Later
research has enlarged the province of these investigations,
and occasionally modified the conclusions which they had
seemed to indicate; but it has not superseded them in any
important respect.
Mr. Knight suffered, as all men must, for cultivating
knowledge and promulgating sentiments at variance with the
popular idea. Indeed, while he lived, freedom of thought and
speech were restrained in the British Dominions, to an extent
which now appears almost incredible. The prosecution of
John Wilkes afforded a glaring demonstration of the disposi-
tion of those in power and station to circumscribe and violate
the personal rights of individuals. In religious matters,
while open impurity of life incurred little disapproval, there
existed an extraordinary sensitiveness in regard to every
possible encroachment upon the domain fenced off and conse-
crated to technical orthodoxy. There was a taboo as strict, if
not as mysterious as was ever imposed and enforced by the
sacerdotal caste of the Kanaka Islands. To be sure, it had
become impossible to offer up a dissentient or an innovator as
a sacrifice, or to imprison and burn him as a heretic. But it
was possible to inflict social proscription, and to stigmatise
unpopular sentiments. The late Dr. Joseph Priestley was one
of these offenders, and found it expedient, after great perse-
cution and annoyance, to emigrate to the United States of
America, where his property was not liable to be destroyed
by mobs, and he could end his days in peace. An exemplary
life, embellished with every public and private virtue, seemed

to constitute an aggravation rather than to extenuate the

offense. If he had " spoken blasphemy," it was, as in the
case of Jesus Christ, a crime for which no punishment known
in law or custom was too extreme. It is easy to perceive that

Mr. Knight, although an exemplary citizen of unexception-

able character, would not escape.
In 1786, he published a limited edition of a treatise, entitled,
'^
An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Friapus, lately
existing at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, etc. ; to which is

added a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection

6
 Preface. v

ivith theMystic Theology of the Ancients." Although the sub-

jectwas extraordinary and prohibited from common conver-
sation as indelicate, Mr. Knight had discussed it with mod-
eration and remarkable caution, giving little occasion to
prudishness or pruriency, or even to " prurient prudes " to
resort to his pages for their accustomed aliment. He added
engravings, however, from coins, medals, and other remains
of ancient art, which he had collected all of which were
;

genuine and authenticated, but were made a handle by which

to misrepresent and vilify him. Having been elected to Par-
liament, a member who was opposed to him in politics, took
the occasion in debate to assert that he had written an im-
proper book. Mr. Knight, long before, in consequence of the
clamor and of the calumny to which he was subjected, had
suppressed a portion of the edition, and destroyed whatever
copies came in his way. But indecency did not constitute
the offense cf the book. Facts were disclosed in regard to
the arcana of religion, which the initiated had before sedu-
lously kept vailed from popular knowledge. Mr. Knight had
only endeavored to present to scholars a comprehensive view
of the origin and nature of a worship once general in the
Eastern world but it was easy to perceive that many of the
;

elements of that worship had been adopted and perpetuated

in the modern faith by which it had been superseded. A
philosophical reasoner can not perceive why it should be
otherwise. Opinions and institutions are not revolutionised
;n a day, but are slowly modified by reflection and experience.
Religion, like the present living race of men, descended
lineally from the worships of former time with like elements
and operation. Names have often been changed where the
ideas and customs remained. But men often fail to think
deeply, and are impatient of any newly-presented fact which
renders them conscious of having cherished an error. Instead
of examining the matter, they often seek to divert attention
from it, by vilifying the persons making the unwelcome dis-
closure. But the works of Mr. Knight, though covertly and
ungenerously assailed, have remained, and are still eagerly
sought and read by scholarly and intelligent men.
The present treatise, though including the principal facts
set forth in the older work, has been carefully divested by the
author of the details and examples, which, however valuable
7
\i Preface.

to the student, were expose it to popular clamor,

liable to
while at the same time embraces a larger field of investi-
it

gation. The endeavor has been made to give an accurate

outline of the ancient religion of the countries from which
we have derived our classical literature and thus to afford
;

correct ideas of the nature and signification of their worship.

The fables which have seemed puerile and often contradic-
tory, are shown to have relation to a profounder system than
had been suspected. We learn the frivolousness of those ideas
derived from superficial reading, which regarded Bacchus as
merely the god of wine, Apollo of art and music, iEsculapius
of medicine, Mercury of oratory and commercial transactions,
Neptune of the sea, etc., and associate the goddesses Ceres,
Diana, Minerva, Venus and Vesta, with the tutelar patronage
of agriculture, celibacy, learning, love and fire. It is to be

regretted that Mr. Knight had not anticipated Messrs. Grote,

Gladstone, and other later writers, and forborne the old
practice of rendering in Latin the names of the principal
Hellenic divinities. However identical Zeus may be with
Jupiter, there are as great differences in character between
Poseidon and Neptune, Hephaistos and Vulcan, Demeter and
Ceres, Artemis and Diana, Athene and Minerva, as between
the deities of the Grecian and Assyrian or Indian pantheons.
Classical usage has authorised the old custom, but at the
expense of truth. It is time now to adopt a more correct
practice, as essential to a right understanding. Let our ver-
sions of Homer, Plato, Thucydides, and other Hellenic writ-
ers, give the names in a dress compatible with the language
in which they were written. It is almost impossible without

this, to obtain accurate perceptions of Grecian ideas and

literature.
Not only do these explanations afford a key to the religion
and mythology of the ancients, but they also enable a more
thorough understanding of the canons and principles of art.
It is well known that the latter was closely allied to the

other so that the symbolism of which the religious emblems

;

and furniture consisted likewise constituted the essentials of

architectural style, and decoration, textile embellishments, as
well as of the arts of sculpture, painting and engraving. Mr.
Knight has treated the subject with rare erudition and ingenu-
ity and with such success that the labors of those who came
 Preface. VII

after him, rather add to the results of his investigations than

replace them in important particulars. The labors of Cham-
pollion, Bunsen, Layard, Bonomi, the Rawlinsons and others,
comprise his deductions so remarkably, as to dissipate what-
ever of his assertions appeared fanciful. Not only are the
writings of Greek and Roman authors now more easy to
comprehend, but additional light has been afforded for a cor-
rect understanding of the canon of the Holy Scriptures.

The editor and publisher of the American Edition have

endeavored, in their respective spheres, to reproduce the
work in a form which shall be convenient and attractive, and
with notes and additional matter to bring it down to the
present state of our knowledge upon the subjects treated.

Voung Bakchos.

9
Seilenos. Silenus.
 CONTENTS.
Preface.

Introduction.,

Principles of Ancient Mythology, i.-v I

The Mysteries, vi.-xii 3

Ancient Coins, xiii.-xvii 7
Bacchus or Dionysus, xviii.-xx 9
Origin of the Mystical Rites, xxi., xxii II
Phallic and Priapic Symbolism, xxiii 12
The Mystic Egg, xxiv 13
"^ The Serpent-Symbol, xxv.-xxvii 13
The Sacred Bull and Goat, xxviii.-xxxiii iS
*The Source of All Things, xxxiv 21
"^he Mother-Goddess, xxxv.-xxxvii 22
The Generations of the Deities, xxxviii.-xl 24
ftFire and Water as Symbols, xli.-xlii 25
Venus-Urania, the Mother-Goddess, xliii.-xlv 28
The Cross and Rosary, xlvi., xlvii 30
" The Myrtle and other Emblems, xlviii., xlix 31
The Amazons or Votaries of the Double-Sexed Deity, 1., li 32
— The Cow-Symbol, lii.-liv 35
Sun- Worship, and the Doctrine of Emanation, Iv.-lvii 37
Liberality and Sameness of the World-Religions, Iviii.-lxii 39
— Why Divine Honors were Paid to Plants, Ixiii., Ixiv 41
Improbability of the Neo-Platonic Interpretations, Ixv., Ixvi 43
Augury and Vaticination, Ixvii.—Ixix ,

44
Prophetic Ecstasy, Ixx.-lxxiii 46
Enthusiastic Frenzy at the Religious Orgies, Ixxv., Ixxvi 49
Judicial Astrology, Ixxvii.-lxxxi 51
Sexual Rites at the Temples, Ixxxii.-lxxxv 54
The Night-Goddess, Ixxxvi., Ixxxvii 56
Horus and Typhon, Ixxxviii 58
The Solar System Anciently Known, Ixxxix., xc 59
The Ancient Temple-Circles, and Fire-Worship, xci.-xciv 5o
Square Temple-Enclosures, and Worship of the Female Principle,
xcv. , xcvi 63
The BuU-Symbol, xcvii., xcviii 65
Bacchus and Ariadne, xcix.-ci 66
II
 Contents.

PAGE
Pyramids, Obelisks, and Churcli-Spires, as Sun-Symbols, cii.-civ 69
The Good and Evil Principles, cv.-cvii 71
-Animal Symbols, cviii.-cx 74
? Symbol of the Horse, cxi 76
Likeness of the Centaurs and Satyrs, cxii 77
Hippa, the Ancient Goddess, cxiii 7g
Meaning of Various Symbolical Representations, cxiv 81
Symbolism and Allegories, cxv., cxvi 81
" The Mother and Daughter " —
Isis and Proserpina, cxvii.-cxix 82
Isis-Worship the Same as the Asiatic Religions, cxx 84
The Swine a Sacrificial Animal, cxxi.-cxxiii 86
Prometheus and the Vulture, cxxiv 63
Putrefaction Abhorred, cxxv 8q
Bacchus and the Leopards, cxxvi go
The ChimEera, cxxvii 91
Apollo and Python, cxxviii., cxxix 91
Hercules Identical with Apollo and Mars, cxxx 92
The Pillars Ascribed to Sesostris, cxxxi 93
Apollo and Dionysus, the Day-Sun and the Night Sun, cxxxii.-cxxxvii.. ,
94
Heat and Moisture as Sexual Symbols, cxxxviii 98
Diana, the Moon-Goddess and Great Mother, cxxxix.-cxli 99
Diana and Isa, cxIii loi
The Bloody Rites of Brimo, cxliii., cxliv 102
Pluto and Serapis Identical, cxiv [03
The Lotus-Symbol, cxlvi , 104
^Egyptian Sculptures, Their Perfection and Prodigious Antiquity, cxlvii.,

cxlviii 105
Certain Antiquity of ^gypt, cxlix.-cli. 106
Ancient ^Egyptians Obtaining Their Symbols from India, clii 109
Architectural Pillars Devised from the Lotus, cliii.-clv 109
Impossible to Invent a New
Order of Architecture, clvi., clvii no
^rhe Fish-Symbol and the Pomegranate, clviii in
The Dog-Symbol of Diana, Thoth, and other Deities, cliv.-clxi 113
Burning and Embalming of the Dead, clxii 116
The Diviner Human Soul, or Nous, clxiii.-clxv iiS
^Sacred Purification by Water and by Fire, clxvi., clxvii 121
Human Sacrifices and the Mystic Baptism of Blood, clxviii 123
—
The Two Human Souls one /Ethereal, or Noetic, the other Terrestial
or Sublunary, clxix.-clxxi 123
Hermes or Mercury, and Vulcan the Fire-God, clxxii.-clxxiv 126
Athena, or Minerva, the Divine Wisdom, and her Symbols, clxxv.-clxxviii, 127
The ^I'-gis, or Goat-Skin Symbol, clxxix., clxxx 13a
Bells in Religious Worship, clxxxi 131
The Boat and the Chariot, Symbols of the Female Principle of Nature,
clxxxii 133
Lightning and Sulphur, Denoting the Masculine Divine Principle,
Ixxxiii., clxxxiv. 134
12
 .

Contents. ^^

PAGE
The Ram Representing Wisdom, clxxxv 136
Amun, Zeus or Jupiter and " Great Pan," Identical, clxxxvi 137
The Mystic Dance, clxxxvii 13S
Pan, the Nymphs, and their Relations to the Sexual Symbolism, clxxxviii.-
cxc 140
The Goat and Priapic Orgies, cxci 142
Composite Symbols, cxcii 143
Cybele Combined with Deities of Other Worships, cxciii 145
Days of the Week Named after Astral Divinities, cxciv 145
Disa, the Isis of Northern Europe, cxcv., cxcvi 146
The Pillar-Stones, cxcvii 147
Cairns or Hillocks at Cross-Roads to Consecrate those Spots, cxcviii 148
Venus-Architis, the Ashtoreth of the Old Testament, cxcix 149
Allegorical Symbols and Stories Explained in the Mysteries, cc 150
The Palm-Tree Symbol, cci 151
Boxing a Feature of the Mystic Worship, ccii 152
Noble Qualities Considered as the Product of Divine Emanation, cciii. .
154
Names of Gods Conferred upon Distinguished Men, cciv., ccv 155
Confusion of Personages and of the Allegories, ccvi 157
Men Begotten by Divine without Human Agency, ccvii 15S
Assuming Foreign Deities Identical with those Worshipped at Home,
ccviii 159
Old Practice of Naming Places Newly-Discovered, and the Confusion
Resulting, ccix., ccx 1 60

Jacob Bryant Criticised, ccxi 161

Euhemerus, Sanchoniathon, and Eusebius Accused of Fraudulently Solv-
ing Myths as Historical Events, ccxiii 162
The Spurious Letter of Alexander the Great to his Mother, ccxv 1&4
Disgraceful Apotheoses of Ancient Emperors, ccxvi 164
The Elementary System" found in Homer and Other Poets, ccxvii.
''
. . . 165
The " Syrian Goddess," and her Peculiar Worship, ccxviii., ccxix 166
The Mysterious Third One, ccxx.-ccxxii 167
J The Mystic Dove and the Italian Woodpecker, ccxxiii 170
Other Delineations at Hierapolis, ccxxiv 172
The Deified Personages, ccxxv 1 73

Emasculates and Virgins in the Sacerdotal Office, ccxxvi 174

iThe Fish-Symbol, ccxxvii 176
The Allegories Eased on the Doctrine of Emanation, ccxxviii 177
The Triune Idea Universal, ccxxix 17S
The Similarity of Symbols net Conclusive Proof of a Single Origin, ccxxx. 178
Apparent Identity of the Hindu and Egyptian Symbols, ccxxxi., ccxxxii. 179
Hindu Poetry and Mythology, ccxxxiii l8i
Ancient Religion and its Relation to Art, ccxxxiv 182

13
 ^

>—

Perseus and Persephone.

INTRODUCTION.

Till a comparatively recent period, it lias been usual to de-

scribe the ancient religion of Babylonia, Assyria, and other
cotemporary nations as a gross polytheism. The multitude
of deities, the sanguinary customs, the mad enthusiasm of the
sacred orgies, the lascivious rites of the Mother-Goddess, were
cited as unequivocal evidence. Every city and community
had a tutelar divinity; human victims were oifered as well as
animals, at the several shrines; at special festivals, men and
women, in the wild intoxication of religious excitement,
abandoned their houses and vocations to celebrate secret cere-
monies, and to wander at considerable distances over the fields
and mountains and although in many places ascetic prac-
;

tices were regarded as conducive to a divine life, in others,

more noted, there was permitted an almost general license, at
the public festivals, and especially at the temples. From
these scenes of debasement, the popular idea of the character
of the ancient worship has been derived.
But explorations have greatly modified the impressions
heretofore entertained, and afforded the " poor heathen " a
stronger hold upon our candor and favorable regard. The
which we have considered absurd and immoral, were
beliefs
which sustained their life;
to countless millions as the breath
and could not be dislodged without peril to those who had
cherished them. The religion of every person is included in
his ideal of the Absolute Right. Every man's conception of
the Deity is the reflection of his own interior character. His
religion is an integral part of himself, true in essence, supe-

rior to the forms of worship, but necessarily contaminated

with the defects of the age and country in which he lives, and
of the race to which he belongs. All are not called to the
15
xiv Iiitrodjidioii.

same formulas of doctrine; every man has a divine right to

revere and copy his own ideal. The heavenly principle and
Supreme Order have been the constant faith of mankind but ;

the forms are apparently as diverse as the mental structures

of races and individuals. There is always a dissension be-
tween persons of sentiment and the scientific, between those
of speculative and investigating mind, and the merely practi-
cal. But neither could be very useful without the existence
of the other and true wisdom shows that it is best in all
;

matters of relia;ious faith to accord the widest latitude and

the most perfect liberty, not by enforced toleration as of an
evil that must be borne, but generously, that every one may
spontaneously follow the path which appears to him the way
of Truth.
The same rule should apply, perhaps even in a larger de-
cree, to the reliffions of archaic time. It has been too com-
mon a practice to misunderstand them. The classical authors
themselves were sometimes too frivolous or superficial to de-
scribe them trutlifully. The teachers of the faith which super-
seded them, have been too zealous to expose their deformities,
without giving due credit and consideration to their essential
merits. It has nevertheless been a matter of astonishment

for us that men of superior mind should adore deities that

are represented as drunken and adulterous, and admit ex-
travagant stories and scandalous adventures among their re-
ligious dogmas. be always remembered that the
Yet, let it

human mind is never absurd on purpose, and that whenever

its creations appear to us senseless, it is because we do not

understand them.
Religions were born from the human soul, and not fabri-
cated. In process of time they evolved a twofold character,
the external and the spiritual. Then symbolism became the
handmaid worship; and the Deity in all his attributes was
to
represented by every form that was conceived to possess sig-
nificance. The sun and moon, the circle of the horizon, and
signs of the Zodiac, the fire upon the altar and the sacred

enclosure which from temenos became temple, the serpent

most spirit-like and like fire of all animals, the ego- which
typified all germinal existence, the exterior emblems of sex
which as the agents propagating and therebv perpetuati no-
for
all living beings, clearly indicated tlie demiurgic potency
i6
 '

Introduction. XV

which actuated the work and function of the Creator, these, —

and a host of other objects naturally and not inappropriately
became symbols to denote characteristics of Divinity. In pro-
cess of time the personifications were regarded as distinct
deities and the One, or Double Unity, or the Quaternion
;

including the Triad and Mother-Goddess, became amplified

into a pantheon. The tutelar divinities of tribes were trans-
formed into the associate gods of nations and the conquest ;

of a people was followed by the transferring of its deities to a

subordinate place in the retinue of the gods of the conquerors.
Sometimes there were haughty innovators like the Assyrians,
or iconoclasts like the Persians, who refused such concessions
and destroyed the symbols of religion among the nations that
had been vanquished. Again, the genius of a people changed
with years, and new deities and representations crowded out
the old. In Aryan countries, this was more commonly the
case and hence the change of doctrines as the centuries
;

passed has rendered the entire subject complex and more or

less confused. Such complications and a forced literal con-
struction of the mythological fables, were adroitly but most
ungenerously seized upon by the adversaries of the popular
worship to show the debasing influence of the ancient relig-
ions. Candid criticism, if there is any such thing, can not
accept their condemnation unqualifiedly. The attacks of
Hermias, Tatian, and Athenagoras, resemble very closely those
of Voltaire against Christianity. Ridicule is always hard to
refute ; but it is The interpre-
not the weapon of noble men.
tation of Euhemerus which transformed the gods into men,
that of Tertullian which gave them substantial existence as
evil demons, and the gross sentiment of Epicurus and Lucre.,
tius, which made of the myths only frivolous fables invented

to amuse, having no specific aim or meaning, were so many

forms of calumny and misrepresentation. Ancient paganism

' We use this term with hesitation. It has degenerated into slang, and is
generally employed with more or less of an opprobrious meaning. The cor-
recter expression would have been "the ancient ethnical worships," but it would
hardly be understood in its true sense, and we accordingly have adopted the
term in popular use, but not disrespectfully. A religion which can develop a
Plato, an Epictetus, and an Anaxagoras, is not gross, superficial, or totally un-
worthy of candid attention. Besides, many of the rites and doctrines included
in the Christian, as well as in the Jewish Institute, appeared first in the other
systems. Zoroastrianism anticipated far more than has been imagined. The-
17
XVI Introdziction.

described by writers like Ovid and Juvenal, by what it had

become in its decline, is like any individual or system in
the period of decay. The loftiest ideas are sure to degenerate
in the hands of sensual persons, into a gross sensualism and
superstition. It was an innocence born of primitive Nature,

which had become as strange to the Romans of the Empire as

to the various peoples of modern time, that admitted into the
religions those sacred legends which we consider scandalous,
and the emblems which are accused of obscenity. The Her-
maic or Baalic statue that constituted the landmark which
might not be removed without profanation,' and that conse-
crated every cross-way and intersection of highways, which
more modern superstition has perverted to desecration, was but
one simple expression of that childlike faith which recognises
and adores God in every natural form, function, and attribute.
" Let us not smile," says that incomparable woman and moral-

ist, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, " let us not smile at their mode

of tracing the Infinite and Incomprehensible Cause throughout

all the mysteries of Nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow
of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity.""
To this pagan symbolism is art indebted for its glories, its
master-pieces, as well as the evolution of all its laws and
principles. The Canon of Proportion which Egypt, Assyria,
Phoenicia, Greece, and Ionia, employed in all their great
works, was deduced from the human form as the ideal of
Divinity, and the harmonious combination of the circle, square
and triangle, in artistic representation.
Nature, as an ingen-
ious writer has plainly shown, has shaped and colored all her
productions, animal and vegetable, as well as earthy and cry-
stalline, according to laws which may be accurately ascer-
tained by mathematical demonstration and which successful
;

art has only pursued and imitated. The peculiar symbolism

of the ethnical religions, being in a manner transcripts and

Cross, the priestly robesand symbols, the sacraments, the sabbath, the festivals
and anniversaries, are allanterior to the Christian era by thousands of years.
The ancient worship, after it had been excluded from its former shrines, and
from the metropolitan towns, was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants
of humble localities. To this fact it owes its later designation. From bein"
kept up in the/aj-;, or rural districts, its votaries were denominated pagans, oi
provincials. —A. W.
' Deuterono7ny, xix. 14 and xxvii. 17.
' Progress of Religious Ideas, Hindostan or India, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.

18
 Introduction. xvii

copies from nature, must necessarily, as indeed it does, con-

stitute the source from which every true artist derives the
best lessons of his sublime vocation. Even the objects and
representations which modern fastidiousness requires to be
hidden from view and excluded from familiar speech, are im-
portant constituents of modern architecture, both in church
and mosque, as they were formerly in temples and emblems
associated with the worship of the Deity. A thorough knowl-
edge of ancient mythology and symbolism is therefore indis-
pensable to a correct understanding of the details and intrica
cies of artistic production. Religion antedated and developed
human skill and ideality.
The Mysteries, which appear to have evolved and perpet-
uated the esoteric principles of the ancient worships, were
doubtless instituted when those worships had reached a com-
parative maturity. Earlier than that, they could have been
hardly possible. Like a child having the intellectual and
spiritual elements chiefly enveloped in the physical, as the
leaf,flower and fruit are included in the bud, so mankind at
firstcomprehended religious ideas as a unity, not distinguish-
ing the envelope from what it enclosed, the symbol from the
idea which it typified. Afterward, they began to perceive that
there was a kernel inside the shell, and even further that
there was a germ or rudiment of a future plant included in
both — that the rugged forms of worship comprised ideas and
principles ramifying into the profoundest details of science,
art, and philosophy. Then immortality was born of the faculty
of veneration ; for he who can perceive God in the universe
will recognise himself as divine from the existence of that
power of perceiving ; and that which is divine is immortal.
It is the kernel in the nut, the germ in the kernel, the entity
of life in the germ. Hence, in the fullness of time, were
established the Mysteries, which evolved from the phenomena
of life the conception of its actual essences, and taught how
purity, and wisdom led to the supreme good.
virtue
" Happy," cries Pindar, " happy is he, who hath beheld those

things common to the region beyond this earth he knows the —

end of life, he knows its divine origin " !
'

The great Author of the Christian religion did not hesitate

' Clement : Stromata, iii. " OXfiioZ odrii idaov sxeiva noiya. sii
vxoxBovioc, oiSsv jiisy fiiov tEXEvrar, oiSsv Se Jio% Sorov apxav"
 ' —

xviii Introduction.

or disdain include esoteric learning in his teachings.

to
When chose his confidential disciples he propounded
he first

his doctrines alike to them and the multitude that thronged

wherever he was. But presently he observed that many, the
01 TtoXXoi, sought him, because they " did eat of the loaves
and were filled." He thenceforth divided his instruction into
'

the moral and the esoteric and " from that time many of his
;

disciples went back, and walked no more with him." He

explained the reason to those who continued with him " It is :

given to you to know the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven,

but to them it is not given therefore, I speak to them in
;

allegories, because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear
"
not, neither do they understand."
The Apostle whose name is associated above all others

with the early establishment of Christianity, likewise divided

the Church into the natural or psychical, and the spiritual,
and addressed his instructions to them accordingly. "We speak
wisdom among them that are perfect " or initiated, he wrote
to the Corinthian believers; "we speak wisdom of God in a
Mystery, secret, which God established in advance of the pres-
ent period for our glory, which none of the archons of this
period knew."
It is not practicable to ascertain with certainty when or

by whom the ancient Mysteries were instituted. Their form

appears to have been as diversified as the genius of the wor-
shippers that celebrated them, while the esoteric idea was so
universally similar as to indicate identity of origin. In Rome
were performed the rites of the Bona Dea, the Saturnalia and
Liberalia, which seem to have been perpetuated in our festi-
vals of Christmas, the Blessed Virgin and St. Patrick in ;

Greece were the Eleusinia, or rites of the Coming One, which

were probably derived from the Phrygian and Chaldean rites,
also the Dionysia, which Herodotus asserts were introduced
'
Gospel according to John, vi. 26.
' Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. II, 13.
' I Corinthians, ii. 6-8. The archons
of Athens always exercised the super-
intendency of the Eleusinia, Thesmophoria, and Bacchic festivals and Paul ;

who was contrasting the " Mystery of Godliness " with the other orgies, ingen-
iously adopted their modes of expression. In the same connection, he also de-
nominates their initiates Jiatural or psychical, thus signifying that they had not
attained the diviner state —
that they were still in the realm of " o-eneration "
not having passed beyond the sphere of the Moon, and therefore had not at-
tained the noetic or spiritual life.
 ;

Introduction. xix

there by Melampus, a mantis or prophet, who got his knowledge

way of the Tyrians from Egypt. The great his-
'

of them by the
torian, treating of the Orphic and Bacchic rites, declares that
they " are in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean." The Mys-- '

teries of Isis in Egypt and of the Cabeirian divinities in Asia

and Samothrace, are probably anterior and the origin of the
others. The Thesmophoria, or assemblages of the women in
honor of the Great Mother, as the institutor of the social state,
were celebrated in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Sicily and ;

we notice expressions in the Books oi Exodus, Samuel and Ezekiel

which indicate that they were observed by the Israelites in
Arabia and Palestine.^ The rites of Serapis were introduced
into Egypt by Ptolemy, the Savior, and superseded the worship
of Osiris and after the conquest of Pontus, where the Persian
;

religion prevailed, the Mysteries of Mithras were carried thence

into the countries of the West, and existed among the Gnostic
sects many centuries after the general dissemination of Chris-
tianity. The Albigenses, it is supposed, were Manicheans or
Mithracising Christians. The Mithraic
doctrines appear to
have comprised all the prominent features of the Magian or
Chaldsean system and we need not be surprised, therefore,
;

that they are represented as embracing magical, occult, and

thaumaturgical science. The Alexandrian Platonists evidently
regarded them favorably as being older than the western
systems, and probably more genuine.
The Mysteries, whatever may have been asserted in their
derogation, nevertheless preserved the interior sense of the
ancient worship. A distinguished writer' has employed his
poetic talent to depict the scenes of an initiation in Egypt
and but for the labor of travellers and antiquaries, we would
imagine that he had woven an ingenious tale of romance. He,
however, has omitted the famous Judgment-Scene of Amenti,
the sublime period of the disembodied soul, though indicating
much that relieves the Egyptian worship from the imputation
of fetishism. Indeed, the Book of Job, which appears on
superficial examination to be an Idumean or Arabian produc-
tion, actually seems to have been a religious allegory or
drama illustrating this very subject. This is not improbable;

' Herodotus : ii. 49, 81.

* £xodiis xxxviii. 8 i Samuel ii. 22
; ; and Ezekiel viii. 14,
• Moore : The Epicurean,
 :

XX Introduction.

for the Apostle Paul himself does not hesitate to assert the
same thino- of narratives in the Old Testament, which are not
easy to verify as authentic history.'
The " Mystic Drama of Eleusis," as Clement so aptly de-
nominates the sacred rites or orgies of the Great Mother,
Demeter, was doubtless taken from the same source as the
Mysteries of Isis." It extended from the institution by the
mythical Eumolpus till the ancient worship was forcibly sup-
pressed by the Emperor Theodosius, about the year 380, a
per.iod of more than eighteen centuries. In it appears to have
been expressed all that was vital and essential in the religion
of Greece. Of its sacredness and majesty, Antiquity has but
one voice. Renan gives us the following outline of the holy
orgies
"Setting aside the immense superiority of the Christian
dogma, setting aside the lofty moral spirit which pervades its
legend [the story of Jesus and his Passion], and to which noth-
—
ing in antiquity can be compared perhaps, if we could be per-
mitted to assist at an ancient Mystery, we would witness simi-
lar things there symbolical spectacles in which the mystagogue
;

was actor and spectator at once, a group of representations

traced in a pious fable, and almost always relating to the so-
journ of a deity on the earth, to bis passion, his descent into
hell, his return to life. Sometimes it was the death of Adonis,
sometimes the mutilation of Atys, sometimes the murder of
Zagreus or of Sabazius.
" One legend, in particular, contributed wonderfully to the
commemorative representations; it was that of Ceres and
Proserpina [or Demeter and Persephoneia]. All the circum-
stances of this myth, all the incidents of the search after Pro-
serpina by her mother, gave room for a picturesque symbolism
' In the Epistle to the Galatians, the circumstances relative to the wife, con-
cubine, and two elder sons of Abraham are denominated aXysYOf>ovi.iEva
(allegoroumend) or allegorising and to the Corinthians he declares that the ex-
;

odus from Egypt and adventures in the wilderness were rvitoi {iupoi), types or
S3mibols, which were written for instruction.
' "The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for its antiquity
in time than for its prevalence as regards space. To the Hindu she was the
Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the Cybele (Kubele) of
Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North. According to Tacitus (Genua,
nia, ix.) she was worshipped by the ancient Suevi. She was worsliipped by the
Muscovite, and representations of her are found upon the sacred drums of the
Laplanders. She swayed the ancient world, from its south-east corner in
India to Scandinavia in the North-west and everywhere she is the Mater
; '

Dolorosa.' And who is it, reader, that in tlie Christian world struggles for life
and power under the name of the Holy Virgin, and through the sad features of
the Madonna? " (Atlantic Monthly, vol. iv. p. 297, —
The Eleusinia, note.)
 Introduction. XXI

which powerfully captivated the imagination. They imitated

the actions of the goddess, and revived the sentiments of
joy and grief, which must successively have animated her.
There was first, a long procession mingled with burlesque
scenes, purifications, watchings, fasts followed by feastings,
night-marches with torches to represent the mother's search,
circuits in the dark, terrors, anxieties —
then, all at once, splen-
did illuminations. The gates of the temple opened ; the actors
were received into the realms of delight, where they heard
voices. Changes of scene, produced by theatrical machinery,
added to the illusion; recitations of which we have a sample
in the Homeric Hymn to Ceres, broke the monotony of the
representation. Each day had its name, its exercises, its
games, its stations, which the actors went through in company.
One day it was a mimic battle in which they attacked each
other with stones. Another day they paid homage to the
—
Mater Dolorosa probably a statue of Ceres as an addolorata, a
veritable Pietd.. Another day they drank the cyceon (kukeon, or
mixed draught), and imitated the jests by which the old lambe
succeeded in amusing the goddess; they made processions to
the spots in the neighborhood of Eleusis, to the sacred fig-tree,
and to the seaside; they ate the prescribed meats, and per-
formed mystic rites, the significance of which was almost
always lost on those who celebrated them. Mixed with these
were Bacchanalian ceremonies, dances, nocturnal feasts with
symbolical instruments.' On their return they gave the reins
to joy the burlesque resumed its place in the gephyrtsmes, or
;

farces of the bridge. As soon as the initiated had reached the

bridge over the Cephissus, the inliabitants of the neighboring
places, running from all quarters to see the procession,
launched out into sarcasms on the holy troop, and lascivious
jokes, to which they with equal wantonness replied. To this,
no doubt, were added scenes of grotesque comicality, a species
of masquerade, the influence of which on the first sketches of
the dramatic art is very perceptible. Ceremonies which in-
volved a symbolism so vague under a realism so gross, had a
great charm for the ancients and left a profound impression;
they combined what man loves most in works of imagination,
a very definite form and a very free sense."
" It is certain that the Mysteries of Eleusis, in particular,
exerted a moral and religious influence that they consoled ;

the present life, taught in their way the life to come, promised
rewards to the initiated, on certain conditions, not of purity

'" It was the time when the Sithonian women are wont to celebrate
The Triennial Mysteries of Bacchus Night a witness to the rites.
:

Rhodope sounds with the clashings of acute brass by night."

Ovid Metamorphoses, vi.
:

**
Women girded phalli to their breasts, solemnising Mysteries."
NoNNUs, xlvii.

23
 ;

xxii Introductiofi.

and piety only, but also of justice; and if they did not like
wise teach monotheism, which would have been a negation of
paganism, they at least approached it as nearly as paganism
was permitted to do. They sustained and cherished in the
soul, by their very mystery, and by the purified worship of
—
Nature, that sentiment of the Infinite of God, in short which —
lay at the bottom of the popular credence, but which the an-
thromorphism of mythology tended incessantly to efface."'
The Dionysia or Mysteries of Bacchus are generally
ascribed to Orpheus,' who is said to have introduced them into

'
Religions of Antiquity. M. Renan asserts further that " deep researches
would show that nearly everything in Christianity that does not depend on the
Gospel is mere baggage brought from the pagan Mysteries into the hostile camp.
The primitive Christian worship was nothing but a mystery. The whole in-
terior police of the Cliurch, the degrees of initiation, tlie command of silence,
and a crowd of phrases in the ecclesiastical language have no other origin.
The Revolution which overthrew Paganism seems, at first glance, a sharp,
trenchant, and absolute rupture with the Past and such, in fact, it was, if we
;

consider only the dogmatic rigidity and the austere moral tone which charac-
terised the new religion. But in respect of worship and^outward observances^
the change was effected by an insensible transition, and the popular faith saved its
most familiar symbols from shipwreck. Christianity introduced, at first, so little
change into the habits of private and social life, that with great numbers in the
fourth and fifth centuries it remains uncertain whether they were Pagans or
Christians ; many seem even to have pursued an irresolute course between the
two worships. On its side, Art, which formed an essential part of the ancient
religion, had to bnak with scarce one of its traditions. Primitive Christian Art
is really nothing but Pagan Art in its decay, or in its lower departments.
The
Good Shepherd of the Catacombs in Rome is a copy from the Aristeus, or from
the Apollo Nomius, which figure in the same posture on the pagan sarcophagi
and still carries the flute of Pan, in the midst of the four half-naked Seasons.
On the Christian tombs of the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the
animals. Elsewhere, the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina, re-
ceive the souls that Mercury, wearing the broad-brimmed hat, and carrying
in
his hand the rod of the soul-guide (psychopompos), brings to them,
in presence
of the three Fates. Pegasus, the symbol of the apotheosis, Psychd, the symbol
of the immortal soul, Heaven personified by an old man, the river
Jordan, and
Victory, figure on a host of Christian monuments."
» Aristotle declared that no such person
as Orpheus ever existed ; and I
entertain no doubt of the correctness of his judgment. The name is evidently
the Chaldaic Urfihi, the designation of a celebrated oracle
at Edessa, which
was much consulted by the Babylonians and Persians. Pausanias
asserts that
Orpheus was a Magian. The legends of his descent into Hell
in quest of his
wife Eurydice, and his safe return to the upperwovld,
however, resemble closely
the other myths of the decease and subsequent resuscitation
of the Myster)'-
gods, and conclusively establish his affiliations with
Osiris, Adonis, Atys, Dio-
nysus-Zagreus, and the other Slain Ones, Protogoni or
Only-Begotten 'sons.
The Cabeirian as well as the Sabazian Mysteries are assigned to him, indicating
that the entire legend came by way of the Phoenicians.
This people had aUo a
24
 Introduction. xxiii

Thrace at a very ancient period, eleven generations before

the destruction of Troy ; also into Thebes and other
parts of Greece. He is affirmed to have preceded all
other religious and his disciples were distin-
teachers ;

guished for their knowledge of medicine, astronomy, and

music, also for the employment of symbols and their devotion
to a life of celibacy. The legend of the Dionysiac or Bacchic
Mysteries recites that Dionysus-Zagreus was a son of Zeus or
Jupiter whom he had begotten in the form of a dragon upon
the Virgin Kore-Persephoneia, whom older myths have made
the same Demeter or Ceres, reputed to be her mother in
as
the Eleusinian story. It was the purpose of Zeus to place

the son thus obtained upon the throne of Olympus. But the
seven Titans surprised the young child and tore him in pieces.
His heart was rescued by Athene and swallowed by Zeus, by
whom he was again begotten, and again made the heir of the
universe.' All these scenes were commemorated, each mysta
being sworn to secresy and at the end, the Hierophant
;

chanted: " I have escaped calamity ; I have found the better

lot."

famous mythical personage or divinity, styled Rapha, whose sons or worshippers,

the Rephaim, or Orpheans, occupied districts in Palestine and east of the Jor-
dan. They were famed, like their Thracian namesakes, for strength of body,
disposition for ascetic life, and proficiency in knowledge and the liberal arts.
^ That ingenious but somewhat fanciful writer, E. Pococke, fondly traces in
this legend the evidence of an ancient Lama Hierarchy in Northern Greece
similar in constitution to that still existing in Thibet. " The Lamaic system,"
says he, " was, at the earliest periods of Greece, undoubtedly administered with
great vigor. Its contests, however, for supremacy, were many, and vigorously
conducted and but for that Tartar population, which in common with the
;

people of Lebanon, formed so powerful an element in the colonisation of prime-

val Phoenician Egypt, it would have been impossible to assure its dominant in-
fluence over nearly the whole of Hellas. This system of religion will be found
to have been so far modified and so far compromised, as to be compelled to take
its place in the asyla of the Mysteries of Greece, in lieu of the open, and as it

were state-position, it once occupied. That Lamaic sovereignity which was

once wielded with the vigor of the triple crown in its most palmy days, had lost its
imperial, and still more its despotic character and an oligarchy of the Hellenic
;

Buddhistic priesthood had taken the place of the absolutism of one. Their
faith, and the faith of those Athenians who were initiated at the Eleusinian
Mysteries, will in the sequel be shown to be identical with that of Pythag-
oras."
" The great head of system of hierarchic domination which in those
this vast
ancient days extended over the known world with an
uniformity and vigor un-
paralleled but by the same system of Buddhistic Rome, during the Middle
Ages was tenned Jeenos by the Greeks, written ' Zeenos,' and appellation
' '

25
xxiv Introduction.

This same proclamation as was made by the bride at

is the
the nuptialceremony and indeed the idea of a sacred marriage
;

is conveyed by the rites of initiation.

" Those who are initiated

sing: 'I have eaten from the drum I have drank from the ;

basin [cymbal] bearing the earthen cup, I have gone to the

;

nuptial chamber.' "

'

In his relation to the sun, as lord of Heaven, demiurge and

Father of Creation, Bacchus was denominated Uvpntaii, Puri-
pats, or Son of Fire, and was represented with the phallic sym-
bolism as was Zeus by that of a serpent, denoting the essen-
;

tial spirit that preceded all things. Hence, in the mystic cista
or ark which was opened to the view of the epopta or seer, were
exhibited the egg, the phallus and the serpent, typifying the
primal essence, the demiurgic power and the organic substance
which is rendered operative —thus constituting a symbolism as
lofty in sentiment or as gross in sense as is the mind of the
person witnessing the spectacle.
After Pontus in Asia Minor, previously held by Persia, had
been conquered by Pompey, the worship of Mithras super-
seded the Dionysia, and extended over the Roman Empire.
The Emperor Commodus was initiated into these Mysteries;
and they have been maintained by a constant tradition, with
their penances and tests of the courage of the candidate for

Buddha pontiffs of antiquity, as well in Phoenicia as in Greece.

given to the
The Greek term Zeus is simply the form 'Jeyus' inflected, and is the term
' '

employed to Ruling Saintly Pontiff of his day. Such was the

express the
Jeenos, '
the King
Gods and men,* that is of the devas (priests) and people in
of
Greece, long before the Homeric days." "The succession of the Lamaic rulers
in Greece appears, judging by the accounts left us by Hesiod, to have been set-
tled by the pure decision of the ruling Pontiff, in lieu of the method at present
adopted in Tartary. There is one new personage begotten by Zeus (the Pon-
'

tiff) who stands pre-eminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose ad-

ventures constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus [Chakras or ruler of

a continent], 'the horned child,' is the Son of Zeus by his own daughter (or
Kor^ or Gouree). He is
votary) Persephone (Parisoopani or Durga, called also
a child of magnificent promise, and predestined to
the favorite of his father ;

grow up to succeed to supreme dominion.' This intended successor to the

Pontificate appears to have been murdered by the Tithyas [Titans] or Heretics.
With the usual Buddhistic however, of transmigration, the young Lama
belief,
isdescribed as born again from the consort of the Jaina Pontiff, the Soo-Lamee
[Semele] or Great Lama Queen. Other accounts represent this new incarna-
tion, who had the name of Dio-Nausus,' as being born upon the holy mountain
'

of '
Meroo,' a history converted by the Greeks to the ' meros' or thigh of Zeus " !

—{India in Greece, chap, xvii.)

'
PsELLUS: Maniiscripis.
2('
 —

Introduction. xxv

admission, through the Secret Societies of the Middle Ages and

the Rosicrucians,down to the modern faint reflex of the latter,
the Freemasons.' The Mithraic rites supplied the model of the
initiatory ceremonies observed in those societies, and are de-
scribed by Justin Martyr and TertuUian as resembling the
Christian Sacraments. The believers were admitted by the rite
of baptism they had a species of Eucharist while the courage
; ;

and endurance of the neophyte were tested by twelve consecu-

tive trials denominated Tortures, undergone within a cave con-
structed for the purpose, and lasted forty days before he was ad-
mitted to a participation in the Mysteries.' The peculiar symbol
of these rites have been found all over Europe and the burial- ;

place of the Three Kings of Cologne, Caspar, Balthasar, and

Melchior, were shown as the tombs of the Magians that visited
Bethlehem. The Gnostics borrowed largely from them and ;

in time their very festival became the Christmas of the Church.

The Jews, too, derived from them the Pharisean doctrines of
future rewards and punishments, a hierarchy of angels as well
as of evil demons, the immortality of the soul, and future judg-
ment. All these were features of the Zoroastrian system but ;

were rej ected by the Sadducees or sacerdotal party who adhered

to the Mosaic polity and rejected all foreign doctrines.
The Cabeirian Mysteries appear to have been the least un-
derstood. Indeed, they were probably different in different
countries. Creuzer traces them to the Phoenicians, and asso-
ciates the worship with that of the Moon-god. Herodotus
identifies the deities with the sons of Phtha or Hephaistos in
Egypt; and Damascius with the seven sons of Sadyk, the
Phoenician deity, of whom Esmun or Asclepius was the eighth.
They are probably identical with the Patseci ox fetishes of the
Phoenicians. Most authors agree that they varied in number,
and that their worship, which was very ancient in Samothrace
and in Phrygia, was carried to Greece by the Pelasgians. Some

C. W. King
' The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 47. The late Godfrey
:

Higgins relates {Anacalypsis, vol, i.) that a Mr. Ellis was enabled, by aid of
the Masonic symbols, to enter the adytum of a Brahmanical temple in Madras.
' " He baptises his believers and followers he promises the remission of sins
;

at the sacred fount, and thus initiates them

into the religion of Mithras he ;

marks on the forehead his ownhe celebrates the oblation of bread

soldiers ;

(with water) he brings

; in the symbol of the resurrection, and wins the crown
with the sword— in order that he may confound and judge us by the faith of his
own followers." Teetullian, Prasctipt.
27
XXVI Inirodjictton.

believe them to have been Demeter, Persephone, and Pluto,

and others add a fourth, Cadmus or Kadmiel, the same as Her-
mes and ^sculapius. They were also worshipped at Lemnos.
The goddess Astarte was likewise celebrated with Pothos and
Phaethon "in most holy ceremonies " of the same nature.
The peculiar form of the Hermaic statues, called Baalim" '^

in the Old Testament, was adopted from the Cabeirian Mysteries.

According to Herodotus, " the Samothracians received these
Mysteries from the Pelasgians, who before they went to live in
Attica, were dwellers in Samothrace, and imparted their relig-
ious ceremonies to the inhabitants. The Athenians, then, who
were the first of all the Greeks to make their statues of Hermes
in this way, learnt the practice from the Pelasgians and by ;

this people a religious account of the matter is given, which is

'
explained in the Samothracian Mysteries."
It is apparent that the idolatry ascribed to the Israelites

and other of Palestine was borrowed from

inhabitants
these rites.Plutarch supposed the Feast of Tabernacles to
have been Bacchanalian, and notices the carrying of the thyrsus
at the feast of trumpets. The Mysteries of the Greeks were
connected solely with the worship of the divinities in the
Underworld; and such appears to have constituted a part of
the orgies of Baal-Peor." " The children of Israel walked in
the statutes of the heathen, did secretly (in the Mysteries)
things that were not right against the Lord their God, built
high places in all their cities, set up Hermaic
statues and the
emblems of Venus-Astarte in every high hill and under every
green tree, worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal-
Hercules, the god of Tyre." ' So closely did the practices as
described by the prophets Hosea, Amos, Micah, Ezekiel, and
Jeremiah, resemble those connected with the Phoenician wor-
ship, including the mystic orgies, the sacred dances and pro-
cessions, that the description of the one is equivalent to that
of the other. Prior to the Babylonish captivity, the religion of
Tyre, Sidon, and Palestine appears to have been general among
the Israelitish tribes but after that event, the Persian influence
;

evidently predominated. But the Macedonians introduced the

'
Herodotus, ii. 51.
' Psalms, cvi. 28. " They joined tLemselves also unto Baal-Peor, and ate
the sacrifices of the dead."
» 2 Kings, xvii. 7-17, abridged.

2S
 Introduction. xxvu

rites of Bacchus, at a later period; and among them also we

have the testimony of St. Jerome, a. d. 400, that in the place
where the Redeemer cried in the manger, the lament of
women for Adonis has been heard even in recent times. The '

Roman senate, in the reign of Theodosius the Great, prohib-

ited the further exercise of the old religious rites ; after which
they fell into general disrepute. But they were secretly ob-
served in all parts of the empire for a long period. To
the fanatical hordes of Islam, proclaiming with the edge of the
cimiter that God was One and Mohammed was his Apostle,
is to be accredited the extinction of theMystic Orgies in the
East, as well as the desecration of shrines and the almost total
destruction of libraries and the works of ancient art. Singu-
lar are the compensations of history the Arabian race planted
;

their colonies with the Mosaic worship in Palestine, and the

Mysteries in Phoenicia, and after chiliads of years, commis-
sioned the destroyers to go over those lands like locusts to-
consume and eradicate the product of their own planting.

'
Epistle 49, to Paulinus.

Aphrodite and Eros.

29
 ;

-^

THE SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE —

OF

ANCIENT ART AND MYTHOLOGY.

PRINCIPLES OF ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY.

1. As all the most interesting and important subjects of

ancient art are taken from the religious or poetical mythology

of the times, a general analysis of the principles and progress
of that mythology will afford a more complete, as well as
more concise, explanation of particular monuments than can
be conveyed in separate dissertations annexed to each.
2. The primitive religion of the Greeks, like that of all

other nations not enlightened by Revelation, appears to have

been elementary, and to have consisted in an indistinct
worship of the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and the
waters,' or rather to the spirits supposed to preside over those
bodies, and to direct their motions, and regulate their modes
of existence. Every river, spring, or mountain had its local
genius or peculiar deity and as men naturally endeavor to
;

obtain the favor of their gods by such means as they feel best
adapted to win their own, the first worship consisted in offer-
ing to them certain portions of whatever they held to be most
valuable. At the same time that the regular motions of the
heavenly bodies, the stated returns of summer and winter, of
day and night, with all the admirable order of the universe,
taught them to believe in the existence and agency of such
superior powers, the irregular and destructive efforts of nature,
such as lightning and tempests, inundations and earthquakes,
persuaded them that these mighty beings had passions and
affections similar to their own, and only differed in possessing
greater strength, power, and intelligence.

'
Plato: Cratylus, 31. "It appears many of the Barbarians now do
to me (said Socrates) that the first men namely, the Sun, Moon, Earth, Stars,
of those connected with Greece con- and Sky."
sidered those only as gods, whom
\
31
 ;;

2 The Symbolical Language of

3. In every stage of society, men naturally love the mar-

vellous but in the early stages, a certain portion of it is abso-
;

lutely necessary to make any narration sufficiently interesting

to attract attention, or obtain an audience whence the actions :

of eods are intermixed with those of men in the earliest tra-

ditions or histories of all nations and poetical fable occupied
;

the place of historical truth in their accounts of the transac-

tions of war and policy, as well as in those of the revolutions
of nature and origin of things. Each had produced some
renowned warriors, whose mighty achievements had been
assisted by the favor, or obstructed by the anger, of the gods
and each had some popular tales concerning the means by
which those gods had constructed the universe, and the prin-
ciples upon which they continued to govern it whence the :

Greeks and Romans found a Hercules in every country which

they visited, as well as in their own ^ and the adventures of
;

some such hero supply the first materials for history, as a cos-
mogojiy or theogony exhibits the first system of philosophy,
in every nation.
As the maintenance of order and subordination among
4.
men required the authority of a supreme magistrate, the con-
tinuation and general predominance of order and regularity
in the universe would naturally suggest the idea of a supreme
God, to whose sovereign control all the rest were subject;
and this ineffable personage the primitive Greeks appear to
have called by a name expressive of the sentiment which the
contemplation of his great characteristic attribute naturally in-
spired, TjtVi^jDseus, or Deus' (^2^ diphthong), signifying, accord-

' This statement seems to require giarised by tlie Greeks, and travestied
some qualification. Hercules was after their peculiar manner. A. W. —
originally the tutelar deity of Tyre, ' Phurnutus Concerning the A'a-
:

the same as Baal or Moloch, the Fire- ture of the Gods, ii.: " By certain ones
god of the Hebrew Scriptures; and he (Zeus) is also called Z'^aj."
hence, by a figure of speech, he is The letter Z
{zetd) was, as is well
described as having visited every coun- known, no other than /i'2 or (ds ^A
try to which the Tyrian commercial or sd) expressed by one character
and exploring expeditions resorted, and in the refinement of language
Some have derived the name from and the varying of the dialects, the
^13-~l1N, aur-chol, the light of the sigma was frequently dropped, as ap-
univeise; but the Sanscrit Heri-Ctil- pears from the very ancient medals of
yus, or Lord of the Noble, is almost Zankle in Sicily, inscribed DANKLE.
equally plausible. An inscription in In the genuine parts of the Iliad
Malta has been deciphered as follows: and Odyssey, there is no instance of a
NnV 7y3 mx DIPPD, Melkarth Ado- vowel continuing short before AKO'2,
inn Baal Tzwra, Melkarth, our Lord, JEIN02, AEIAD,, etc.; so that
the Baal, or tutelar deity of Tyre. the initial was originally a double
He was represented by the Sun, whose consonant, probably A'S ; which at
annual progress through the Signs of first became /I A, and afterwards A,
the Zodiac was typified and commem- though the metre of the old bards has
orated by the twelve Orgies, or Works preserved the double time in the
of Hercules. This legend was pla- utterance.
32
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 3

ing to the most probable etymology, reverential fear or awe.

Their poets, however, soon debased his dignity, and made him
the subject of as many wild and extravagant fables as any of
his subject-progeny; which fables became a part of their re-
ligion, though never seriously believed by any but the lowesi
of the vulgar.
5. Such appear to be the general principles and outlines
of the popular faith, not only among the Greeks, but among
all other primitive nations not favored by the lights of Reve-
lation for though the superiority and subsequent universality
;

of the Greek language, and the more exalted genius and refined
taste of the early Greek poets, have preserved the knowledge
of their sacred mythology more entire, we find traces of the
same simple principles and fanciful superstructures, from the
shores of the Baltic to the banks of the Ganges and there can :

be little doubt, that the voluminous poetical cosmogonies still

extant among the Hindus, and the fragments preserved of
those of the Scandinavians, may afford us very competent ideas
of the style and subjects of those ponderous compilations in
verse, which constituted the mystic lore of the ancient priests
of Persia,* Germany," Spain, Gaul, and Britain and which in ;

the two latter countries were so extensive, that the education

of a Druid sometimes required twenty years." From the speci-
mens above mentioned, we may, nevertheless, easily console
ourselves for the loss of all of them as poetical composi-
tions, whatever might have been their value in other res-
pects.

THB MYSTERIES.

6. But besides this vulgar religion, or popular mythology,

there existed, in the more civilised countries of Greece, Asia,
and Egypt, a secret or mystic system, preserved, generally, by
an' hereditary priesthood, in temples of long-established sanc-
tity; and only revealed, under the most solemn vows of secresy,

to persons who had previously proved themselves to be worthy

of the important trust. Such were the Mysteries of Eleusis, in
Attica, which being so near to the most polished, powerful,
and learned city of Greece, became more celebrated and more
known than any others; and are, therefore, the most proper
* Hermippus: afud Plin. lib. xxx. c. editum, et filium Mannum originem
I. Vicies centum millia versuum a gentis conditoresque.
Zoroastre condita. ' Cmsks.: de Bello GallUa,-n, Mag-
' Tacitus Germany.
: Celebrant num ibi numerum versuum ediscere
(Germani) carminibus antiquis, quod dicuntur ; itaque nonnuUi annos vi-
unum apud illos memorise et anna- cenos in disciplina permanent ; neque
Hum genus, Tuistonem deum terra fas esse existimant ea litteris mandare.

35
 :
;

The Symbolical Language of

for a particular investigation, which may lead to a general

knowledge of all.'
7. These mysteries were under
the guardianship of Ceres
and Proserpina, and were called teletai, endings, on finishes, be-
cause no person could be perfect that had not been initiated
either into them or some others. They were divided into two
stages or degrees, the first or lesser of which was a kind of
holy purification, to prepare the mind for the divine truths
which were to be revealed to it in the second or greater.
From one to five years of probation were required between
them and at the end of it, the initiate, on being found worthy,
;

was admitted into the inmost recesses of the temple, and

made acquainted with the first principles of religion ;
* the
knowledge of the God of nature ; the first, the supreme, the intel-

lectuals'' bywhich men had been reclaimed from rudeness and bar-
barism to elegance and refinement, and been taught not only to live
with more comfort, but to die with better hopes}"
8. When Greece lost her liberty, the periods of probation
;"
were dispensed with in favor of her acknowledged sovereigns
' The secret or Mystical system ap- vailed, while those that had passed all
pears to have been the basis of the the trials successfully were denom-
ancient worship ; the difference be- inated epopta, or seers, as having
tween the sacred rites and legends of learned the wisdom of the gods.
the several countries being more in A. W.
form than in substance. The desig- 8Salmasius: not. in ^1. Spartan.
nation of mystery or z'aj'A'w^ Is applied Hist. p. 116. Meursius: Eleusinia, c.
to it as having been vailed from all ex- viii. etc.
cept the initiated. The doctrines thus • Plutarch Concerning Isis and
:

concealed were denominated gnosis, Osiris. " The end of which is the
or knowledge, and SOPHIA, or wisdom; knowledge of the First, the Lord, and
and were accounted too sacred for the noetic."
profane or vulgar inspection. They Cicero: DeLeg. i. c. 24. Mihi cum
">

were regarded as including all science multa eximia divinaque videntur Athe-
of a higher character, the moral and na: tuae peperisse —
turn nihil melius
theurgical by preference. The in- illismystcriis, quibus ex agresti im-
terior doctrines, supposed to have manique vita exculti, ad humanitatem
been treated of by the Alexandrian mitigati sumus : initiaque, ut appellan-
Jews, were called the Apocrypha, or tur, ita revera principia vitas cognovi-
hidden things ;wjiile the disclosures mus neque solum cum
: Isetitia vivendi
by the early Christian teachers were rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum
termed the Apocalypse, or unvailing. spe meliori moriendi.
The memorable words of Socrates Plutarch: Consolatory Letter, x.
were plain in meaning to the initiated "As for what you hear others say,
" We owe the cock to .iEsculapius who persuade the vulgar that the soul,
pay it, and do not neglect it." It was whenever freed from the body, suffers
the last offering made by candidates no inconvenience or evil, nor is sensi-
who had been inducted into the Greater ble at all, I know that you are better
Mysteries and the dying philosopher
; grounded in the doctrines delivered to
thus avowed his consciousness that he us from our ancestors, as also in the
also was undergoing the last test or Orgies of Dionysus, for the mystic
discipline, and was about to witness symbols are well known to us, who
the revelation. While on their pro- are of the brotherhood."
bation, the candidates were called " Plutarch: Demetrius.
neophytes, or new-born, and mysta, or

36
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 5

but, nevertheless, so sacred and awful was this subject, that

even in the lowest stage of her servitude and depression, the
Emperor Nero did not dare to compel the priests to initiate
him, on account of the murder of his mother.'" To divulge
anything thus learned was everywhere considered as the ex-
treme of wickedness and impiety, and at Athens was punished
with death;" on which account Alcibiades was condemned,
together with many other illustrious citizens, whose loss con-
tributed greatly to the ruin of that republic, and the subver-
sion of its empire."
9. Hence it is extremely difficult to obtain any accurate
information concerning any of the mystic doctrines all the ;

early writers turning away from the mention of them with a

sort of religious horror," and those of later times, who have
pretended to explain them, being to be read with much cau-
tion, as their assertions are generally founded in conjecture,
and oftentimes warped by prejudices in favor of their own
particular systems and opinions in religion and philosophy.
Little more direct information is, indeed, to be obtained from
ancient writers than that contained in the above-cited pas-
sages, from which we only learn that more pure, exalted, and
philosophical doctrines concerning the nature of the Deity
and the future state of man were taught than those which
were derived from the popular religion.
10. From other passages, however, we learn that these
doctrines were conveyed under allegories and symbols," and
that the completely initiated were called inspectors (seers):"
whence we may reasonably infer that the last stage of initia-
tion consisted in an explanation and exposition of those alle-
gorical tales and symbolical forms, under which they were
vailed. " All that can be said concerning the gods," says
Strabo, " must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables
it being the custom of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and

" Suetonius: Nero, xxxiv. " Proclus: Theology of Plato, i. 4.

" Andocides: Oration concerning
tAe Mysteries.
" Thucydides: iv. 45.
" Plutarch: Symposiacs, ii. 3.
" Other matters, according to Herod-
otus, it is proper to be silent about,
being a mystical subject."
According to Clement of Alexan-
dria, the tragedian ^schylus narrowly
escaped being murdered on the stage
of the theatre for using an expression
which was supposed to have been
taken from the Mystic Orgies, and
only escaped by shovring the people
that he had never been initiated.
" The Orpheans endeavored to express
divine things by symbols, the Pytha-
goreans by similitudes."
Demetrius: Phaler. De Eloc, 100.
" Wherefore also the Mysteries are
expressed in allegories, for the
purpose of inciting confusion of mind
and terror, as in darkness and
night."
" Epoptai or Ephori. All that is
left in ancient authors concerning the
ceremonies of initiation, etc., has been
diligently collected and arranged by
Meursius, in his Eleusinia,

39
6 The Symbolical Language of
which
fable their thoughts and discourses concerning nature ;
are not therefore easily explained." " " In all initiations and
mysteries," says Proclus, " the gods exhibit themselves
under
many forms, and with a frequent change of shape; sometimes
in a human
as light, defined to no particular figure; sometimes
form; and sometimes in that of some other creature."" The
wars of the Giants and Titans, the battle of the Python
against Apollo, the flight of Bacchus, and wandering of Ceres,
are ranked by Plutarch with the Egyptian tales concerning
Osiris and Typhon, as having the same meaning as the other
modes of concealment employed in the mystic religion."
11. The remote antiquity of this mode of conveying knowl-
edge by symbols, and its long-established appropriation to
religious subjects, had given it a character of sanctity unknown
to any other mode of writing and it seems to have been a
;

very generally received opinion, among the more discreet

Heathens, that divine truth was better adapted to the weak-
ness of human intellect, when vailed under symbols, and wrap-
ped in fable and enigma, than when exhibited in the undisguised
simplicity of genuine wisdom or pure philosophy."'
12. The art of conveying ideas to the sight has passed
through four different stages in its progress to perfection. In
the first, the objects and events meant to be signified, were
simply represented in the second, some particular character-
:

istic quality of the individual was employed to express a general

quality or abstract idea as a horse for swiftness, a dog for
;

vigilance, or a hare for fecundity in the third, signs of con-

;

vention were contrived to represent ideas, as is now practiced

by the Chinese and, in the fourth, similar signs of convention
:

were adopted to represent the different modifications of tonfe

in the voice; and its various divisions, by articulation, into
distinct portions or syllables. This is what we call alphabetic
writing which is much more clear and simple than any other
;
;

the modifications of tone by the organs of the mouth, being

much less various, and more distinct, than the modifications of
ideas by the operations of the mind. The second, however,
" Strabo: lib. x. p. 474. Osiris and Tvphon, and others, which
'^^
Vkoclvs: The Jiefublic. of Plato. everybody may lawfully and freely
20 Plutarch: IHs and Osiris, 25. hear, as they are told in the mytho-
" Whatthey sing about among the logical story. The like may also be
Greeks concerning the Giants and said of those things which, being
Titans, and certain horrid acts of vailed over in the mystic rites and
Kronos (Saturn), as also of the sacred ceremonies of initiation, are
combats of Python with Apollo, the therefore kept private from the sight
flights of Dionysus (Bacchus), and the and hearing of the common people."
wanderings of Demeter (Ceres) come " Maximus Tyrius: Dissertation,
nothing short of the relations about x. 4.

40
Coins of Syracuse, ttc.
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 7

which, from its use among the Egyptians, has been denomin-
ated the hieroglyphical mode of writing, was everywhere em-
ployed to convey or conceal the dogmas of religion and we ;

shall find that the same symbols were employed to express the
same ideas in almost every country of the northern hemisphere.

ANCIENT COINS.

In examining these symbols in the remains of ancient

13.
art, which have escaped the barbarism and bigotry of the
Middle Ages, we may sometimes find it diflBcult to distinguish
between those compositions which are mere efforts of taste
and fancy, and those which were emblems of what were
thought divine truths but, nevertheless, this difficulty is not
:

so great, as it at first view appears to be for there is such an

;

obvious analogy and connection between the different emble-

matical monuments, not only of the same, but of difierent and
remote countries, that, when properly arranged and brought
under one point of view, they, in a great degree, explain them-
selves by mutually explaining each other. There is one class,
too, the most numerous and important of all, which must have
been designed and executed under the sanction of public au-
thority, and therefore, whatever meaning they contain, must
have been the meaning of nations, and not the caprice of indi-
viduals.
14. This is the class of coins, the devices upon which were
always held so strictly sacred, that the most proud and power-
ful monarchs never ventured to put their portraits upon them,
until the practice of deifying sovereigns had enrolled them
among the gods. Neither the kings of Persia, Macedonia, or
Epirus, nor even the tyrants of Sicily, ever took this liberty
the first portraits that we find upon money being those of the
Egyptian and Syrian dynasties of Macedonian princes, whom
the flattery of their subjects had raised to divine honors. The
artists had indeed before found a way of gratifying the vanity
of their patrons without oflending their piety, which was by
mixing their features with those of the deity whose image was
to be impressed an artifice which seems to have been prac-
;

ticed in the coins of several of the Macedonian kings, previous

to the custom of putting their portraits upon them."
15. It is, in a great degree, owing to the sanctity of the
" See those of Archelaus, Amyntas, cules, seem meant to express those of
Alexander II., Perdiccas, Philip, Alex- the respective princes. For the fre-
ander the Great, Philip Aridseus, and quency of this practice in private
Seleucus I., in all which the different families among the Romans, see Statu
characters and features, respectively Sylv. 1. 1, 231-4.
given to the different heads of Her-
43
8 The Symbolical Language of

devices, that such numbers of very ancient coins have been

preserved fresh and entire; for it was owing to this that they
were put into tombs, with vases and other sacred symbols, and
not as Lucian has ludicrously supposed, that the dead might
have the means of paying for their passage over the Styx the :

whole fiction of Charon and his boat being of late date, and pos-
terior to many tombs in which coins have been found."
16. The first species of money that was circulated by tale,
and not by weight, of which we have any account, consisted of
spikes or small obelisks of brass or iron, which were, as we
shall show, symbols of great sanctity, and high antiquity. Six
of them being as many as the hand could conveniently grasp,
the words obolus and drachma, signifying spike and handful, con-
tinued, after the invention of coining, to be employed in ex-
pressing the respective value of two pieces of money, the one
of which was worth six of the other. In Greece and Mace-
donia, and probably wherever the Macedonians extended their
conquests, the numerary division seems to have regulated the
scale of coinage but, in Sicily and Italy, the mode of reckon-
;

ing by weight, or according to the lesser talent, and its sub-

divisions,''' universally prevailed. Which mode was in use
among the Asiatic colonies, prior to their subjection to the
Athenians or Macedonians, or which is the most ancient, we
have not been able to discover. Probably, however, it was
that by weight, the only one which appears to have been known
to the Homeric Greeks the other may have been introduced
;

by the Dorians."'
17. By opening the tombs, which the ancients held sacred,
and exploring the foundations of ruined cities, where money
was concealed, modern cabinets have been enriched with more
complete series of coins than could have been collected in any
period of antiquity. We can thus bring under one point of
view the whole progress of the art from its infancy to its de-
cline, and compare the various religious symbols which have
been employed in ages and countries remote from each other.
'" The whole
legend of Charon and Thrace made them a part of the
his boat to conduct passengers or mysticrites. —
A. W.
" Bentley: Onthe EpistUsofPha-
spirits from the living world to the
region of the dead, was taken from laris, &c. Pausan. 1. i. c. 39.
the Egyptian Judgment of Amenti. " Rawlinson: Herodotus, Km. to
After the inquest upon the deceased Book, i. "Agold coinage existed
person had been satisfactorily con- among the Asiatic Greeks, as at Pho-
cluded at the Kiroim, or sacred tower, casa, Cyzicus, Lampsacus, Abydos, &c.
an offering was made to the divinities It was copied from the Lydian, to
of the Underworld, and the body which it conformed in weight and gen-
ferried over the Acheron to the Cata- eral character." As far as has been
combs. The Orphic Mysteries of ascertained, the Lydian coinage is of
the highest antiquity. —
A. \V.
44
Bakchos or Dionysos.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 9

These symbols have the great advantage over those preserved

in other branches of sculpture, that they have never been mu-
tilated or restored and also that they exhibit two composi-
;

tions together, one on each side of the coin, which mutually

serve to explain each other, and thus enable us to read the
symbolical or mystical writing with more certainty than we
are enabled to do in any other monuments. It is principally,
therefore, under their guidance that we shall endeavor to ex-
plore the vast and confused labyrinths of poetical and allegor-
ical fable and to separate as accurately as we can, the theology
;

from the mythology of the ancients by which means alone :

we can obtain a competent knowledge of the Mystic, or, as it

was otherwise called, the Orphic faith, and explain the general
style and language of symbolical art in which it was conveyed.

BACCHUS OR DIONYSUS.

1 8. Ceres and Bacchus (or Demeter and Dionysus or lac-

chus), called iniEgyptlsis and Osiris, and in Syria, Venus and
Adonis (Astarte and Adoni), were the deities in whose names,
and under whose protection persons were most commonly
instructed in this faith."" The word Bacchus or lacchus is a title
derived from the exclamations uttered in the festivals of this
god,"' whose other Latin name, Liber, is also a title signifying
the same attribute as the Greek epithet, Lusios, or Luson, which
will be hereafter explained. But, from whence the more com-
mon Greek name, Dionusos, is derived, or what it signifies, is
not so easy to determine, or even to conjecture with any rea-
sonable probability. The first part of it appears to be from
Deus, Dios, or Dis, the ancient name of the supreme universal
god but whether the remainder is significant of the place
;

from which this deity came into Greece, or of some attribute

belonging to him, we cannot pretend to say, and the conjec-
tures of etymologists, both ancient and modern, concerning it
are not worthy of notice."' An ingenious writer in the
Asiatic Researches derives the whole name from a Sanscrit title
of an Oriental demi-god,"° and as Ausonius says it was
•' Herodotus: ii. 42. " They (the *' They are in fact the same name in

Egyptians) declare Osiris to be identi- different dialects, the ancient verb

cal with Dionysus," or Bacchus. PAXil, in Laconian BAXil, having
EURlPmES: Bacchm, 73. "Oh become by the accession of the augment
happy, blessed he that vifitnesseth
is VWAlCil, v. laxon-
the initiation of the deities, for he " See Macrobius: i. c. 18, & Bry-
venerateth the source of life ; not only ANT Ancient Mythology
: , iii. 103.
does he divine the Orgies of Cybele, ''' Asiatic li£searches,\A.-f.'iOd,.Y)if^s.
the Great Mother, but waving the Nahushaor Deo-nus. He is said to
thyrsus, and crowned with ivy, he is have overcome the adversaries of the
also a votary of Dionysus." Brahmans in all countries, and after-
47
 ; ; ;

10 The Symbolical Language of

Indian.'" this derivation appears more probable than most

others of the kind.
19. At Sicyon, in the Peloponnesus, he was worshipped
under another title, which we shall not venture to explain any-
further than that it implies his having the peculiar superin-
tendence and direction of the characteristics of the female
sex." At Lampascus, too, on the Hellespont, he was vene-
rated under a symbolical form adapted to a similar oflBce,
though with a title of a different signification, Friapus, which
will be hereafter explained.'"
20. According to Herodotus, the name Dionysus, or
Bacchus, with the various obscene and extravagant rites that
distinguished his worship, was communicated to the Greeks
by Melampus," who appears to have flourished about four
generations before the Trojan war," and who is said to have
received his knowledge of the subject from Cadmus and the
Phcenicians, who settled in Bceotia. The whole history, how-
ever, of this Phoenician colony is extremely questionable
and we shall show in the sequel that the name Cadmus was
probably a corruption of a mystic title of the Deity." The
Cadmii, a people occupying Thebes, are mentioned in the

ward to have become a serpent. What-
ever the plausibility of the legend,
Bacchus or Dionysus was identified
with the serpent-worship wherever
—
found. A. W.
'" AusoNlus . Epigram, xxv.
Ogygia me Bacchum vocat,
Osirin .lEygyptus putat
Mysii Phanacem nominant
Dionysum Indi existimant, &c.
" Clement, of Alexandria, declares
that he was denominated Choiropsale
by the Sicyonians, a low term express-
ing immodest practices with women.
^* Athen^us : Dipnosophista, i.
23.
" Priapus was honored by the people
of Lampsacus ; Dionysus or Bacchus
bearing that designation, as he is
also called Thriambus and Dithyram-
bus."
'* Herodotus; ii.
49. " Melampus
introduced into Greece the name of
Dionysus, his worship and the proces-
sion of the phallus. He did not so
completely apprehend the whole doc-
trine as tobe able to communicate it
but various sages since his
entirely,
time have carried out his teachings to
greater perfection ; still it is certain
that Melampus introduced the phallus,
and that the Greeks learnt from him
the ceremonies which they now per-
form. I therefore maintain that Me-
lampus, who was a wise man, having
the art of vaticination, became ac-
quainted with the Dionysian worship
through knowledge derived from
Egypt, and that he introduced it into
Greece, with a few slight changes, to-
gether with certain other customs. I
can not allow that the Dionysiac cere-
monies in Greece are so nearly the
same as the Egyptian, merely from co-
incidence: they would have been more
Greek in their character and of less
recent origin. Nor can I admit that
the Egyptians borrowed these customs,
or any other whatever from the Greeks.—
My opinion is that Melampus got his
knowledge of them from Cadmus, the
Tynan, and the companions who ac-
companied him into the country called
Bceotia."
It is hardly necessary to remark that
Cadmus was a deity, identical with Her-
mes, Thoth and jEsculapius ; also that
Melampus or black-foot is but an epi-
thet for an Egyptian. He was doubt-
—
less a fictitious character. A. W,
*• Odyssey, xv. 226, et seqq.
" Kasiuillus ox Kadmiel is the name
of one of the gods of the Samothjacian
Mysteries.— A. W.

48
 1;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 1

Iliad ;" and Ino, or Leucothoe, a daughter of Cadmus, is

mentioned as a sea-goddess in the Odyssey" But no notice
is taken in either poem of his being a Phoenician nor is it ;

distinctly explained whether the poet understood him to have

been a man or a god, though the former is more probable, as
his daughter is said to have been born mortal.

ORIGIN OF THE MYSTICAL RITES.

21. General tradition has attributed the introduction of

the mystic religion into Greece, to Orpheus, a Thracian
"
;

who, if he ever lived at all, lived probably about the same

time with Melampus, or a little earlier." The traditions con-
cerning him are, however, extremely vague and uncertain
and the most learned and sagacious of the Greeks is said to
;
have denied that such a person had ever existed " but, never-
theless, we learn from the very high authority of Strabo that
the Greek music was all Thracian or Asiatic," and, from the un-
questionable testimony of the Iliad, that the very ancient poet
Thamyris was of that country," to which tradition has also
attributed the other old sacerdotal bards, Musseus and Eu-
molpus."
As
there is no mention, however, of any of the mystic
22.
deities, nor of any of the rites with which they were wor-
shipped, in any of the genuine parts, either of the Iliad or
Odyssey, nor any trace of the symbolical style in any of the
works of art described in them, nor of allegory or enigma ir
the fables which adorn them, we may fairly presume that both
the rites of initiation and the worship of Bacchus are of a
later period, and were not generally known to the Greeks till
after the composition of those poems." The Orphic Hymns,
too, which appear to have been invocations or litanies used in

'* Iliad, V. 807. " According to the Parian or

^' Odyssey, v. 539. Arundelian Marbles, the Eleusinian
^ EusEBius Praparatio Evangeli.
: mysteries were introduced 175 years
i. " They say that Orpheus, the
ch. 6. before the Trojan war but Plutarch ;

son of CEagreus brought the Mysteries attributes their introduction to Eu-

from the Egyptians and communicated molpus, de Exit.
them to the Greeks." *> Cicero Nature of the Gods, i. c.
:

Aristophanes Tht Frogs, 1032.

: 28. Orpheum poetam docet Aristote-
" Orpheus showed us the initiations." les nunquam fuisse. The passage is
— TeUtai. not in the works of Aristotle now ex-
PrOCLUS Theology of Plato, i.
: 5.» tant.
"All theology among the Greeks is ^' Strabo; x. p. 471.
theoutbirth of the Orphic Mystagogy." " Iliad, iii. 595.
Pausanias : Corinth, xxx. 2. " The ''^
Plutarch On Banishment.
:

jEginetans have the initiation of He- " Some suppose them to have been
kate every year, saying that Orpheus the more ancient worship, thus vailed
the Thracian instituted the rites." for preservation. —A. W.
SI
12 The Symbolical La7iguage of

the Mysteries" are proved, both by the language and the mat
ter,to be of a date long subsequent to the Homeric times,
there being in all of them abbreviations and modes of speech
not then known, and the form of worshipping or glorifying
the deity by repeating adulatory titles, not being then in use,
though afterward common."

PHALLIC AND PRIAPIC SYMBOLISM.

23. In^gypt, nevertheless, and all over Asia, the mystic

and symbolical worship appears to have been of immemorial
antiquity. The women of the former country carried images
of Osiris in their sacred processions, with a movable phallus
of disproportionate magnitude, the reason for which Herodo-
tus does not think proper to relate, because it belonged to the
mystic religion." Diodorus Siculus, however, who lived in a
more communicative age, informs us that it signified the gene-
rative attribute," and Plutarch, that the ^Egyptian statues of
Osiris had the phallus to signify his procreative and prolific
power," the extension of which through the three elements of
air, earth, and water, they expressed by another kind of statue,
which was occasionally carried in procession, having a triple
symbol of the same attribute." The Greeks usually repre-
sented the phallus alone, as a distinct symbol, the meaning of
which seems to have been among the last discoveries revealed
to the initiated." It was the same, in emblematical writing,
as the Orphic epithet, Pan-genetor, universal generator, in which
sense it is still employed by the Hindus." It has also been
observed among the idols of the native Americans " and
ancient Scandinavians"; nor do we think the conjecture of
an ingenious writer improbable who supposes that the may-
pole was a symbol of the same meaning, and the first of May
a great phallic festival both among the ancient Britons and
Hindus, it being still celebrated with nearly the same rites in
both countries." The Greeks changed, as usual, the personi-
^i'
Pausakias: ^«jV(J, c. xxxvii. s. 3. " Tertullian: Concerning tlit
"Whoever has witnessed an initiation Valeniinians, (a sect of Ophites or
at Eleusis, or those called Orphic, of Gnostics.) "After many sighings
knows what I say." of the seers (epoptm), the entire sealing
" Arrian, lib. V. of the tongue, (from divulging it) an
" Herodotus: ii. 48. image of the virile organ is revealed."
^ Diodorus Siculus: i. 88. " Sonnerat Voyage aux Indes.
:

^' Isis and Osiris. " They exhibit '* Lafitau, Mtxurs des Sauvages, i.

the statue in human semblance, hold- v. 150.

ingthe sexual part prominent as fecun- " Olaus Rudbeckius: Atlantica,
dating and nourishing." p. ii. c. 5.
'» Isisand Osiris. " They display " Maurice : Indian Antiquities, vi.
the emblem and carry it around, hav- pp. 87-94.
ing the sexual parts threefold."
52
 :

Ancient Art and Mythology. 13

fied attribute into a distinct deity called Priapus, whose uni-

versality was, however, acknowledged to the latest periods of
heathenism."
THE MYSTIC EGG.

24. is celebrated by the

In this universal character he
Greek poets, of Eros, Love or Attraction, the
under the title
first principle of animation, the father of gods and men, and
the regulator and disposer of all things." He is said to per-
vade the universe with the motion of his wings, bringingpure light
and thence to be called the splendid, the self-illumined, the ruling
Priapus''' —
light being considered in this primitive philosophy
as the great nutritive principle of all things." Wings are
attributed to him as the emblems of spontaneous motion ; and
he is said to have sprung from the q^% of night, because the
Egg was the ancient symbol of organic matter in its inert
state, or, as Plutarch calls it, the material of generation, con-
taining the seeds and germs of life and motion without being
actually possessed of either. It was, therefore, carried in pro-
cession at the celebration of the Mysteries for which reason ;

Plutarch, in the passage above cited, declines entering into a

more particular disquisition concerning its nature, the Pla-
tonic interlocutor in the Dialogue observing, that, though
a small question, it comprehended a very great one, concerning the
generation of the world itself known to those who understood the
,

Orphic and sacred language, the egg being consecrated, in the Bacchic
mysteries, as the image of that which generated and contained all
things in itself^"
THE SERPENT-SYMBOL.

25. As organic substance was represented by the

symbol of the Egg, so the principle of life, by which

*' Titul antiq. in Gruter, i. 195, No. was the first. Myfriend Sylla saying
I. PRIEPO PANTHEO. that with this little question, as with
" Aristophanes: 5!>(/j,6q3. He- an engine, was involved the great and
SIOD: Theogony, 116. Orphic Hymn, weighty one concerning the genesis of
V. 29 and 57. the world, declared his dislike of such
" Orph. Hymn, V. v. 5. problems. * * I speak to those who
" Sophocles: CEdipus Tyrannus, understand the sacred legend of Or-
1437. pheus, which shows not only that the
™ Plutarch: Symposiacs, ii. 3. egg is before the bird, but makes it
" They suspected that I held the Or- before all things. The other matter
phic and Pythagorean dogmas, and we will not speak about, being as
refused to eat the egg (as some do the Herodotus says, of a mystic character,
heart and brain), because it is sacred ;
* * * Therefore, in the Orgies
imagining it to be the first principles of Dionysus it is usual to consecrate
of generated existence. * * Soon after an egg as representing that which
Alexander proposed the problem con- generates and contains all things in
ceming the egg and the bird, which itself"

55
 ;

14 The Symbolical Language of

it was called into action, was represented by that

of the Serpent which having the property of cast-
;

ing its skin, and apparently renewing its youth, was nat-
urally adopted for that purpose. We
sometimes find it coiled
round the e^g^, to express the incubation of the vital spirit
and it is not only the constant attendant upon the guardian
deities of Health," but occasionally employed as an accessory
symbol to almost every other god," to signify the general
attribute of immortality. For this reason it served as a gen-
eral sign of consecration " and not only the deified heroes
;

of the Greeks, such as Cecrops and Erichthonius, but the

virgin mother of the Scythians (Echidna), and the consecrated
founder of the Japanese, were represented terminating in ser-
pents." Both the Scythians and Parthians, too, carried the
image of a serpent or dragon, upon the point of a spear, for
their military standard," as the Tartar princes of China still
continue to do whence we find this figure perpetually repre-
;

sented on their stuffs and porcelain, as well as upon those of

the Japanese. The inhabitants of Norway and Sweden con-
tinued to pay divine honors to serpents down to the sixteenth
century °° and almost all the Runic inscriptions, found upon
;

tombs, are engraved upon the sculptured forms of them °' ;

the emblems of that immortality to which the deceased were

thus consecrated. Macha Alia, the god of life and death
among the Tartars, has serpents entwined round his limbs and
body to express the first attribute, and human skulls and
scalps on his head and at his girdle, to express the second."
The jugglers and diviners also, of North America, make
themselves girdles and chaplets of serpents, which they have

»' Phurnutus: Concerning the

no- Herodotus mentions this legend, but
turea/tht Gods.iaami. "They have set makes Hercules the lover of the ser-
apart the serpent to him (yEsculapius), pent-queen (iv. 8-10. See also Kaem-
because those who are engaged in this pfer's History 0/ Japan, ii. p. 145).
healing art make use of it as a symbol « Arrian: in Prccf., p. 80. LuciAN,
for becoming young as it were after De Hist, conscrib., p. 39.
sickness, and putting off old age." " Ol MAGi^.de Gent. Sefitent. Hist
«2 Justin Martyr: Apology, ii. Epit.l. in. Serpentes ut sacros cole-
By all among you who worship the bant ;— asdium servatores atque penates
neathen gods, the serpent is depicted existiman es :— reliquise tamen hujus
as their great symbol and mystery." superstitione culturae— in nonnuUis
eapERSius: Satires, l "Paint two secretis solitudinum sedibusque per-
snakes, my boys, and the place then is severant ;sicuti in septentrionalibus
regnis Norvegije ac Vermelandi^.
^°\T'
•"DioDORUS ^SlcuLUS:ii.43."The " Ol. Vareui: Hunagr. Olans
Scythians related the fable of a giant RuDBECK:^//a»^. No. iii. c. i
(earth-bom) maiden among tliem that
;
6" Voyageen
SibMe par F Abb'i Chap-
she had the womanly organs of the pe cT Cuteroche, pi. xviii. The figure
bodyabove, but those of a viper below, in brass is in the collection of Mr.
(echidna) s.nA that by intercourse with Knight.
Zeus she had the child Scythes."

56
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 15

the art to tame and familiarise °° and, in the great Temple of

;

Mexico, the captives taken in war, and sacrificed to the Sun,

had each a wooden collar in the shape of a serpent put round
his neck while the priests performed the horrid rites." In the
kingdom of luida, about the fourth degree of latitude, on the
western coast of Africa, one of these reptiles was lately, and
perhaps is still, worshipped as the symbol of the Deity " and ;

when Alexander entered India, Taxilus (Takshasila) a power-

ful prince of the country, showed him a serpent of enormous
size, which he nourished with great care, and revered as the
image of the god, whom the Greek writers, from the similitude
of his attributes, call Dionysus or Bacchus." The Epidau-
rians kept one in the same manner to represent ^sculapius " ;

as did likewise the Athenians, in their celebrated temple of

Minerva, to signify the guardian or preserving deity of the
Acropolis." The Hindu women still carry the lingam, or
consecrated symbol of the generative attribute of the Deity,
in solemn procession between two serpents;" and, in the
sacred casket, which held the egg and phallus in the mystic
processions of the Greeks, was also a serpent." Over the
porticoes of all the ancient Egyptian temples, the winged disk
of the pun is placed between two hooded snakes (or asps),
signifying that luminary placed between its two great attri-
butes of motion and life. The same combination of symbols,
to express the same attributes, is observable upon the coins
of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians " and appears to have ;

been anciently employed by the Druids of Britain and Gaul,

as it still is by the idolaters of China." The Scandinavian
goddess Isa or Disa was sometimes represented between two
serpents " and a similar mode of canonisation is employed
;

in the apotheosis of Cleopatra, as expressed on her coins."

Water-snakes, too, are held sacred among the inhabitants of
" Lafitau: Mcaurs des Sauvages, t. '* See Stukeley's Abury; the orig-
i. p. 253. inal name of which temple, he ob-
™ AcoSTA: History of the Indies, p. serves, was the Snake's Head: and it

382. is remarkable the remains of a similar

" Hist. Gen. des Voyages, t. iv.p.305. circle of stones in Bceotiahad the same
" Maximus Tyr: Dissert., viii. c. 6. name in the time of Pausanias.
'^Livy: .ffij/., xi. epitom. Pausanias .Soj^rfa, xix. 2. "The
:

'*Herodotus: viii. 41. Thebans call a certain little spot of

" SoNNERAT Voyage aux
: Indes, t. ground surrounded by stones selected
i. p. 253. for the purpose, the Serpent's Head."
" See the mystic cistae on the num- " Olaus Rudbeckius: Atlantica,
mi cistophori of the Greek cities of part iii. i. 25, and part ii. p. 343, plate
Asia, which are extremely common, A, i. 510.
and to be found in all cabinets and ** The
report that Cleopatra came
books of ancient coins. toher end from the bite of the asp or
" Medailles de Dutens, p. i. Mus. umus, is due to the wearing of an
Hunter., tab. 15, fig. v. and viii. effigy of the reptile upon the regal

57
 — —

i6 The Symbolical Language of

the Friendly Islands "' and, in the mysteries of Jupiter Sa-

;

bazius, the initiated were consecrated by having a snake put

down their bosoms.'^
26. The sort of serpent most commonly employed, both
by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hindus, is the cobra de
capellay naga, or hooded snake; but the Greeks frequently use
a composite or ideal figure sometimes with a radiated head, ;

and sometimes with the crest or comb of a cock '' accessory ;

symbols, which will be hereafter further noticed. The mys-

tical serpent of the Hindus, too, is generally represented
with five heads, to signify, perhaps, the five senses, but still
it is the hooded snake, which we believe to be a native of In-

dia, and consequently to have been originally employed as a

religious symbol in that country from whence the Egyptians ;

and Phcenicians probably borrowed it, and transmitted it to

the Greeks and Romans upon whose bracelets, and other ;

symbolical ornaments, we frequently find it."

diadem. She had arrayed herself in overriding the Old Testament, the
the paraphernalia of royalty, and Ophites constructed a doctrine of
placed on her head the crown of Egypt, emanation after the model of the Zo-
surmounted by the Thermutis as a roastrians, Buddhistsand Jewish Ka-
token that she had not compromised by which they explained the
balists,
her rank, but died a queen. ^A. W. production and evolution of all forms
*' Missonaries' first Voyage, p. 238. of existence. The Supreme Being
'*Arnobius: v. p. 171, Clement generated from himself a second, Sige
of Alexandria Exhortation to the Gen-
: or Silence, and by her Sophia or Pneu
tiles. Julius Firmicius, c. 27. ma, the divine Wisdom, and then by
Jupiter Sabazius or lacchus Sabazius lierthe perfect being, Christ, and the
isthe serpent-deity of the mysteries, imperfect one, Achamoth. These four
identical with Kronos or Hercules ;
produced the Holy Church according
and the drama or allegory there repre- to the heavenly ideal. Meanwhile,
sented is thus set forth by Nonnus ; Achamoth, the imperfect wisdom, de-
" Kore-Persephoneia, you scended into Chaos, imparting life to
'scaped not
marriage. the elements ; and finally by conjunc-
But were wived in a dragon's nuptial tion with matter produced the Creator,
bonds, Ilda-Baoth, or " Son of Darkness."
When Zeus changed form and aspect.
And as a serpent coiled in love-inspiring He generated an emanation ; then a
wreaths, second, till six were brought fourth, lao,
Came to tlie chamber of dusky Kore, Sabaoth, Adoni, Eloi, Urseus, and As-
Waving his rough beard '*' *
Thus by the Dragon of the ^ther, taphaeus. These, with himself, be-
Persephone brought forth offspring, came the seven spirits of the planets ;

Even Zagreus, the bull-horned child." he also generated archangels, angels.

"^ La Chausse: Rovian Museum, Energies, Potencies, to preside over
vol. i., tables 13-14. The radiated the details of the creation. The seven
serpent or agatlwdcsmon, is common then created man, a crawling monster,
on gems. See C. W. KiNG : Gnostics and by communicating to him the ray
and their Remains, of divine light rendered him the image
^ The
serpent appears also to have of the Supreme Being. The Demi-
been adopted by certainsectaries as a urge, enraged that his production
part of the Christian mysteries, and .should be superior to himself, animated
some remnants of the worship still ex- the image of himself formed by reflec-
ist. Adopting the book of Enoch, and tion in the abyss as in a mirror. This
kindred preference to the
treatises in was Satan Ophiomorphus, called by
New Testament, and almost entirely the Ophites Michael and Samael

58
 " :

Ancient Art and Mythology. 17

27. Not only the property of casting the skin, and acquir-
ing a periodical renovation of youth, but also that of pertina-
ciously retaining life even in amputated parts, may have re-
commended animals of the serpent kind as symbols of health
and immortality, though noxious and deadly in themselves.
Among plants, the olive seems to have been thought to pos-
sess the same property in a similar degree " and therefore ;

was probably adopted to express the same attribute. At

Athens it was particularly consecrated to Pallas-Athene but ;

the statue of Jupiter at Olympia was crowned with it '° and ;

it is also observable on the heads of Apollo, Hercules, Cybele,

one being the reputed tutelar angel
oEthe Jews, and the other the prince
of devils. Ilda-Baoth now forbade
the man to eat of the tree of knowl-
edge, which could enable him to un-
derstand the mysteries and receive the
graces from above. But Achamoth,
to defeat this project, sent her own
genius Ophis or the serpent to instruct
man to transgress the command so un-
justly imposed upon him. He thus
became illuminated from heaven.
Ilda.Baoth then made the material
body for a prison in which man was
enthralled. Achamoth, however, con-
tinued his protector, and supplied him
witli divine light as. he needed in his
trials. Of the seed of Adam only
Seth kept alive the seed of Light. His
children in the wilderness received the
living serpent which coils around the
bread and thus makes it holy. This
serpent is the representative of Ophis,
who instructed the first man to eat of
the tree of knowledge, and so deliver
himself from nakedness and the law
of jealousy. Ophis is identical with
Kneph or Agathodasmon, the Serpent
of the Mysteries. Mani the heresiarch
taught that he crawled over the bed
and overshadowed the Virgin Mary.
The serpent-club of .(Esculapius was a
badge of the Ophites, who indeed are
supposed to have existed long before
the Christian era. They abounded in
Asia, Egypt, Spain, and all parts of
the Christian world.
The Ophites and Gnostics employed
secret signs of recognition. Epiphan-
ius thus describes them " On the
:

law from Ilda-Baoth, but through the arrival of any stranger belonging to
teachings of the prophets, Achamoth the same belief, they have a sign given
caused them to receive some idea of by the man to the woman, and vice
the higher life, and afterward induced versa. In holding out the hand under
her own mother, Sophia, to move the pretense of saluting each other,
Supreme Being to send down Christ they feel and tickle it in a peculiar
to aid the children of Seth. She also manner underneath the palm, and so
persuaded Ilda-Baoth to prepare for discover that the new-comer belongs to
his advent by his own agent John the the same sect. Thereupon, however
Baptist, and also to cause the birth of poor they may be, they serve up to
the man Jesus, this being a demiurgic him a sumptuous feast, with abun-
rather than a divine work. At the dance of meats and wine. After
baptism in the Jordan, Christ entered they are well filled the entertainer
into the man Jesus, who immediately rises and withdraws, leaving his
comprehended his divine mission and wife behind, with the command
began his work. Ilda-Baoth stirring '
show thy charity to this man, our
up the Jews against him, he was put brother.'
to death. Immediately Sophia and The Albigenses, Cathari and Pauli-
Christ invested him with a body of cians are reckoned among the worship-
Eether and placed him at the right hand ers of the agathodasmon. —
A. W.
of Ilda-Baoth by whom he is unper- *'
Virgil: Georgics, ii. v. 30, and
ceived. Here he collects the purified 181.
souls and when all these are restored,
; Theophrastus : Hist. Plant, lib. v.
the world will end, and all the re-
deemed will enter into the pleroma. '^ Pausanias : EHac. i.
In their eucharist the Ophites have a s. I.

S9
iS The Symbolical Language of

and other " the preserving power, or attribute of im-

deities ;

mortality, being, in some mode or other, common to every

personification of the divine nature. The victors in the
Olympic Games were crowned with branches of the
also
oleaster or wild olive " the trunk of which, hung round with
;

the arms of the vanquished in war, was the trophy of victory

consecrated to the immortal glory of the conquerors; " for as
it was a religious as well as military symbol, ic was contrary

to the laws of war, acknowledged among the Greeks, to take

it down, when it had been once duly erected.

THE SACRED BULL AND GOAT.

28. Among the sacred animals of the Egyptians, the bull,

worshipped under the titles of Mnevis and Apis, is one of the
most distinguished. The Greeks called him Epaphus," and
we find his image, in various actions and attitudes, upon an
immense number of their coins, as well as upon some of those
of the Phoenicians, and also upon other religious monuments
of almost all nations. The species of bull most commonly
employed is the urus, auroch, or wild bull, the strongest animal
known in those climates which are too cold for the propaga-
tion of the elephant " which was not known in Europe, nor
;

even in the northern or western parts of Asia, till Alexan-

der's expedition into India, though ivory was familiarly
known even in the Homeric times." To express the attribute
strength, in symbolical writing, the figure of the strongest
animal would naturally be adopted wherefore this emblem, ;

generally considered, explains itself, though, like all others

of the kind, it was modified and applied in various ways.
The mystic Bacchus, or generative power, was represented
under this form, not only upon the coins, but in the temples
of the Greeks " sometimes simply as a bull at others, with
: ;

" See coins of Rhegium, Macedonia, Plutarch Ids and

: Osiris. " Many
Aradus, Tyre. etc. of the Greeks make bull-shaped sym-
** Aristophanes: Plut. 586. bols of Dionysus ; and the women of
'' Ibid. 943. the Eleans praying, invoke the cloven-
™ Herodotus; ii. 153. " The Greek footed divinity to come to them. The
name for Apis is Epaphus." Argives call Dionysus the Bull-begot-
EiiRlproES: /'/za;»w«,688. " Epa- ten" {Bougenes), or "a bee" as it is
phus, child of lo, whom she brought sometimes rendered, from the fable of
forth to Zeus." bees hatched in a putrefying carcass.
" C.«sar: War in Gaul,'h<:>oW\. Athen^us Dipnosophistts, b. xi.
:

»' Pausanias i. c. 12. This proves " In Cyzicus, he (Bacchus) is

: 476.
that the coins with an elephant's skin represented as bull- formed."
on the head, are of Alexander II., It is probable that the bull-symbol
king of Epirus, son of Pyrrhus. was astrological, The Sun formerly
»»Lycophron: 2og. "The Bull" entered the sign of Taurus at the
(taurus) i. e., Dionysus. vernal equinox, thus beginning a new
60
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 19

a human face and, at others, entirely human except the horns

;

or ears." The age, too, is varied the bull being in some in- ;

stances, quite old, and in others quite young; and the human-
ised head being sometimes bearded, and sometimes not.°°
29. The Mnevis of the Egyptians was held by some to be
the mystic father of Apis °° and as the one has the disk upon
;

his head, and was kept in the City of the Sun, while the other
is distinguished by the crescent," it is probable that the one was

the emblem of the divine power acting through the sun and ;

the other, of it acting through the moon, or (what was the

same) through the sun by night. Apis, however, held the
highest rank, he being exalted by the superstition of that
superstitious people into something more than a mere sym-
bol, and supposed to be a sort of incarnation of the Deity in
a particular animal, revealed to them at his birth by certain
external marks, which announced his having been miracu-
lously conceived by means of a ray from Heaven." Hence,
when found, he was received by the whole nation with every
possible testimony of joy and gratulation, and treated in a man-
ner worthy of the exalted character bestowed on him " which ;

was that of the terrestrial image or representative of Osiris ;

'"''

in whose statutes the remains of the animal symbol may be

traced.'"'
Their neighbors the Arabs appear to have worshipped
30.
their god under the same image, though their religion was
more simple and pure than that of any Heathen nation of an-
tiquity, except the Persians, and perhaps the Scythians.
They acknowledged only the male and female, or active and
passive powers of creation the former of whom they called
;

Urotalt '°° a name which evidently alludes to the Urus. He-

;

season and
resuscitating tlie year, ray of fire comes from heaven upon
From the bull became the em-
this, the cow, and she immediately becomes
blem or representative of the Supreme pregnant with Apis."
Being, and of course a sacred or sacer- " Herodotus-, iii. 27. " Always on
—
dotal animal.- A. W.
'' Bronzi Hercolano,
his appearance the whole of Egypt
t. i. tav. I. feasted and kept jubilee."
Coins of Camarina. Plate ii. of the last '™ PLUTARCH: Ids and Osiris.
volume of " the Select Specimens." "Apis, in Memphis, was regarded as
—-" " Coins
of Lampsacus, Naxus. the eidolon or visible representation of
^^ VlJJTAS.cn: Isis and Osiris. "The the soul of Osiris."
bull maintained at Heliopolis, called "" Strabq: xvii. " Of Apis, who is
Mnevis (some regarded him as sacred Osiris himself." See plate 2 of vol. i.
to Osiris, and others as the father of of Select Specimens, where the horns of
Apis) is black, and has the sacred the bull are indicated in the disposing
honors of the Apis." of the hair."
" See the /«a<r 7ato/x, etc. ^
'"i*
Herodotus: iii. 8. "They have
*' Herodotus: iii. 28. "Now this but the tutelar gods, Dionysus and
Apis or Epaphus is the calf of a cow, Urania. .They call Dionysus,
.

which is never aftei-ward able to bear Urotalt."

young. The ./Egyptians say that a Wilkinson suggests that Urotal is

63
 —

-O The Symbolical Language of

rodotus calls him Bacchus, as he does the female deity,

Celestial Venus; by which he means no more than that they
were personifications of the attributes which the Greeks wor-
shipped under those titles.
31. The Chinese have still a temple called the Palace of
the horned Bull '" and the same symbol is venerated in
;

Japan, and all over Hindustan.'" In the extremity of the

West it was also once treated with equal honor the Cim- ;

brians having carried a brazen bull with them, as the image

of their god, when they overran Spain and Gaul '" and the
;

name of the god Thor, the Jupiter of the ancient Scandina-

vians, signifying in their language a bull as it does likewise ;

in the Phoenician and Chaldee."" In the great metropolitan

temple of the ancient Northern Hierarchy at Upsal, in Sweden,
this god was represented with the head of a bull upon his
breast '" and on an ancient Phoenician coin, we find a figure
;

exactly resembling the Jupiter of the Greeks, with the same

head on his chair, and the words Baal Thurz, in Phoenician
characters, on the exergue.'"* In many Greek, and in some
.Egyptian monuments, the bull is represented in an attitude
of attack, as if striking at something with his horns '°° and at ;

Miako in Japan, the creation of the world, or organisation

of matter, is represented by the Deity under the image or
symbol of a bull breaking the shell of an egg, with his horns,
and animating the contents of it with his breath "° which ;

probably explains the meaning of this attribute in the Greek

and Egyptian monuments; the practice of pittting part of a com-
}^^
position for the -whole being common in symbolical writings
32. In most of the Greek and statues of the bull,Roman
that we have seen, whether in the character of Mnevis or Apis,
the same as allah-taal, or God the ex- and playing upon the sound of words,
alted also that it may come from
; forwhich the ancients were famous.
AUR, light. If Alilat (or Lilith) is the The Hebrew text of the Old Testa-
Night-Goddess, the latter is the more ment abounds with examples. The
probable etymology. Mr. Knight's bee was sacred to Venus, because its
hypothesis is not plausible. A. W. — name melitta was like Mylitta the As-
">' Hist. Gen. des Voyages, i, vi. Syrian designationof the Mother-
p.
452. Goddess. Thus linor Tlt^ Tur ox
""^
Recherches sur les Arts de la Greci, Sttr, signifies an ox and IV Tzttr, or
;

&c. rock, the name of Tyre, has nearly the

>»5 Plutarch: In Mario. same sound, and so makes a very good
109 Plutarch :/« .Sy/Za, c. 17. " The phonetic for symbolical writing.
Phoenicians call the bull Thur." A. W,
"' Olaus Rudbeckius: Ailantica, i""
See coins of Thurium, Syracuse,
part ii. c. v. p. 300, fig. 28 also pp. ; Tauromenium, Attabyrium.
321, 338, 339. "» Memorable Embassy to the Em-
^"^ Medailles de Dut^)Ls, p. I. The peror of Japan, p. 283.
coin, better preserved, Mr.
is also in '" See coins of Acanthus, Maronea,
Knight's collection. Eretria, Sic.
I think this an example of punning

64
 ,
id i:i:ii;ill!!i!!iiiii:l

Zeus. Jupiter.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 21

of both which many are extant of a small size in bronze,

there is a hole upon the top of the head between the horns
where the disk or crescent, probably of some other material,'"
was iixed: for as the mystical or symbolical was engrafted
upon the old elementary worship, there is always a link of
connection remaining between them. The Bacchus of the
Greeks, as well as the Osiris of the .Egyptians, comprehended
the whole creative or generative power, and is therefore rep-
resented in a great variety of forms, and under a great vari--
ety of symbols, sign ifying his subordinate attributes.
33. Of these the goat is one that most frequently occurs;
and as this animal has always been distinguished for its lu-
bricity, it probably represents the attribute directed to the
propagation of organised being in general.'" The choral
odes sung in honor of Bacchus were called tragodiai, or
goat-songs and a goat was the symbolical prize given on the
;

occasion it being one of the forms under which the god him-
;

self had appeared.'". The fauns and satyrs, the attendants

and ministers of Bacchus, were the same symbol more or less
humanised and appear to have been peculiar to the Greeks,
;

Romans, and Etruscans for though the goat was among the
:

sacred animals of the Egyptians, and honored with singular

rites of worship at Mendes, we do not find any traces of these
mixed beings in the remains of their art, nor in those of any
other ancient nations of the East though the Mendesian ;

rites were admirably adapted to produce them in nature, had

it been possible for them to exist
"^ and the god Pan was
;

there represented under such a form.""

THE SOURCE OF ALL THINGS.

34.But notwithstanding that the " first- begotten Love " or

mystic Bacchus, was called the Father of gods and men, and
the Creator of all things, he was not the primary personifica-

"' Five of these are in Mr. Knight's This is done at the season when the
collection, on one of which the disk is .(Egyptians beat themselves in honor
remaining. of Osiris."
Herodotus ii. 132. " As for the
: '" Diodorus Siculus : i. 88.
"''
cow, the greater part of it is hidden K'SOl.'L.OViO^Xii: Bibliotheca, iii. c.

by a scarlet coverture, and between iv. s. 3.

the horns there is a representation in "' Herodotus : ii. 46. " A goat
gold of the orb of the sun. The fig- was exhibited copulating with a wo-
ure is not erect, but lying down, with man."
the limbs under the body the dimen-
;
"« Herodotus: ii. 46. " The artists
sions being fully those of a large ani- in .(Egypt delineate and sculpture the
raal of the kind. Every year it is taken symbols of Pan, like the Greeks, as
from the apartment in which it is having the countenance and limbs of
kept and exposed to the light of day. a goat."

67
 ;

22 The Symbolical Language of

tion of the divine nature Kronos or Zeus, the unknown

;

Father, being everywhere reverenced as the supreme and al-

mighty. In the poetical mythology, these titles are applied
to distinct personages, the one called the Father, and the other
the Son but in the mystic theology, they seem to have
;

signified only one being — the Being that fills eternity and
infinity.'" The ancient theologists appear to have known
that we can form no distinct or positive idea of Infinity,
whether of power, space, or time it being fleeting and fugi-;

tive, and eluding the understanding by a continued and

boundless progression. The only notion that we have of it,
arises from the multiplication or division of finite things ;

which suggest the vague abstract notion, expressed by the

word infinity, merely from a power which we feel in ourseh^es,
of still multiplying and dividing without end. Hence they
adored the Infinite Being through personified attributes, sig-
nifying the various modes of exerting his almighty power
the most general, beneficial, and energetic of which being
that universal principle of desire, or mutual attraction, which
leads to universal harmony, and mutual co-operation, it nat-
urally held the first rank among them. " The self-generated
mind of the eternal Father," says the Orphic poet, " spread
the heavy bond of Love through all things, that they might
endure forever " "° which heavy bond of love is no other
;

than the Eros Protogonos (Love Only-Begotten) or mystic Bac

chus; to whom the celebration of the Mysteries was there-
fore dedicated.

THE MOTHER-GODDESS.

35. But the Mysteries were also dedicated to the female or

passive powers of production supposed to be inherent in Mat-
ter.'" Those of Eleusis were under the protection of Ceres,
called by the Greeks Demeter ; that is, ISJ other Earth; "" and

'" Euripides Hiridida.

:
" Seest containeth the elements from which
thou the immense Kther on high, and everything is produced."
the earth around held in its moist '^" DiODORUS SicuLUS; ii. 12. "In
embrace ? Revere Zeus and obey like manner to call her Demeter, by a
God." trifling transposition of a word, the
"8 Orphic Fragments, xxxviii. A ancientname being Ge-meter."
passage from Empedocles, preserved by Solon In Brunch's Analectica,
: i,

Athenagoras, thus describes the ele- 24. " Great mother of the deities of
ments that compose the world : Olympus, the most excellent black
" Firewater, earth, and the soft air above, earth."
And vrith them, Love." y^ns Kennedy more plausibly forms
'" Plutarch: Symposiacs, ii. qu. 3. Demeter ixoxa. the Sanskrit Deva-ma-
"For matter hath the function of tri, or Mother-Goddess; and Cerei
mother and nurse, as Plato says, and Uom Shri. Both are names of Laksh.
6S
l!!iiiiig|iil'lii!ii!iiiii^
Ceres. Demeter.
 ;

A7icient Art and Mythology. 23

though the meaning of her Latin name be not quite so ob-

vious, it is in reality the same the Roman c being originally
;

the same letter, both in figure and power, as the Greek gam-
ma,"" which was often employed as a mere guttural aspirate,
especially in the old iEolic dialect, from which the Latin is
principally derived. The hissing termination, too, in the ^
belonged to the same wherefore the word, which the Attics
:

and lonians wrote £R4, EPS, or 'BPR, (era, ere, or here,)

would naturally be written FEPES (geres) by the old
^olians the Greeks always accommodating their orthography
;

to their pronunciation and not, like the English and French

;

encumbering their words with a number of useless letters.

36. Ceres, however, was not a personification of the brute
matter which composed the earth, but of the passive produc-
tive principle supposed to pervade it,'" which, joined to the
active, was held to be the cause of the organization and ani-
mation of its substance; from whence arose her other Greek
name /JHiO (Deo) the Inventress. She is mentioned by Virgil,
as the Wife of the omnipotent Father, iEther or Jupiter;'"
and therefore the same with Juno; who is usually honored
with that title and whose Greek name TIPH (here) signifies, as
;

before observed, precisely the same.'" The Latin name lUNO

is derived from the Greek name Dione, the female Zeus or Dis
the Etruscan, through which the Latin received much of its
orthography, having no d or o in its alphabet. '"' The ancient
Germans worshipped the same goddess under the name of
Hertha "" the form and meaning of which still remain in our
;

words, earth and hearth. Her fecundation by the descent of

the active spirit, as described in the passage of Virgil before
cited, is most distinctly represented in an ancient bronze at
Strawberry Hill. As the personified principle of the produc-
tive power of the Earth, she naturally became the patroness
of agriculture and thus the inventress and tutelar deity of
;

legislation and social order which first arose out of the divi-
sion, appropriation, and cultivation of the soil.

mi, consort of Vishnu. See Hindu in love with her great body, nourishes
Mythology, pp. 394-395. all her offspring."
'" See Senatus Consultum Mar- "'Plutarch. SeeEosEBlus./'ne-
cianum also coins of Gela, Agrigen-
; poratio Evangelica, iii. i. " Ge (earth)
turn and Rhegium. is Hera," (Juno, or Lady.)
''^'
Ovid; Fasti, i. 673. '" Moor, the author of the Hindu
" Officium commune Ceres et Terra tuen- Pantheon, Godfrey Higgins and others
tur ; derive the name Juno from the San-
Hfficprjebetcausamfrugibus, Ilia locum." ^^^.jj y^^^-^ ^^ ^^^ Hebrew and Chal.
"^ Virgil: 0<^!yz«, ii. 324. "Then daic njV Juneh, a dove, representa-
the Omnipotent Father, great Rxhcx, tive of the Mother Goddess. The
with fecund showers, descends into the Hebrew and Sanscrit have no J.
bosom of his rejoicing wife, and united '^' Tacitus Germany.
;

71
 24 The Symbolical Language of

37. The Greek title seems originally to have had a more

general signification for without the aspirate (which was
;

anciently added and omitted almost arbitrarily), it becomes

-EPJ? (ere), and by an abbreviation very common in the Greek
tongue, P-E or FEE (Re, Ree, Rea) which pronounced with the
:

broad termination of some dialects, become PKA and with ;

the hissing one of others, RES a word retained in the Latin,

;

signifying properly matter, and figuratively every quality and

modification that can belong to it. The Greek has no word
of such comprehensive meaning the old general term being,
;

in the refinement of their language, rendered more specific,

and appropriated to that principal mass of matter which forms
the terraqueous globe; and which the Latins also expressed by
the same word united to the Greek article r^ spa terra. —
THE GENERATIONS OF THE DEITIES.

38. The ancient word, with its original meaning, was how-
ever retained by the Greeks in the personification of it Rhea, :

the first of the goddesses, signifying universal matter, and

being thence said, in the figurative language of the poets,
to be the mother of Jupiter, who was begotten upon her by
Time. In the same figurative language, Time is said to be the
son of Ovpavoi, {Ouranos) or Heaven that is, of the supreme ;

termination and boundary, which appears to have been origin-

ally called noikovj (koiloii) the hollow or vault, which the
Latins retained in their word C(elu7n, sometimes employed
to signify the pervading spirit, that fills and animates it.
Hence Varro says that Coelum and Terra, that is universal
mind and productive body, were the Great Gods of the Samothra-
cian Mysteries and the same as the Serapis and Isis of the
;

later Egyptians: the Taautos and Astarte of the Phoenicians,

and the Saturn and Ops of the Latins.'" The licentious im-
aginations of the poets gave a progenitor even to the person-
ification of the supreme boundary Ouranos, which progenitor
they called Akmon the indefatigable '"' a title which they ;

seem to have meant perpetual motion, the primary attribute

of the primary being.""
39. The allegory of Kronos or Saturn devouring his own
children, seems to allude to the rapid succession of creation
and destruction before the world had acquired a permanent
constitution, after which Time only swallowed the stone that :

is, exerted its destroying influence upon brute matter ; the gen.

"'' Z)e Lingtta Latina, iw. 10. "' Phurnutus: De Natura Deo-
"' Akamatos, akamon, akmon, etc. rum, i.

72
Rhea. Kybele.
 :

Ancient Art and Mythology. 25

erative spirit, or vital principle of order and renovation, being

beyond its In conjunction with the earth, he is said
reach.'"
'"
to have cut off the genitals of his father, Uranus or Heaven ;

an allegory, which evidently signifies that Time, in operating

upon matter, exhausted the generative powers of Heaven so ;

that no new beings were created.

40. The notion of the Supreme Being having parents, though
employed by the poets to embellish their wild theogonies,
seems to have arisen from the excessive refinement of metaphy-
sical theology a Being purely mental and absolutel)' immate-
:

rial, having no sensible quality, such as form, consistence, or

extension, can only exist, according to our limited notions of
existence, in the modes of his own action, or as a mere ab-
stract principle of motion. These modes of action, being
turned into eternal attributes, and personified into distinct
personages. Time and Matter, the means of their existing
might, upon the same principle of personification, be turned
into the parents of the being to which they belong. Such re-
finement may, perhaps, seem inconsistent with the simplicity
of the early ages but we shall find by tracing them to their
;

source, that many of the gross fictions which exercised the

credulity of the vulgar heathens, sprang from abstruse
philosophy conveyed in figurative and mysterious expres-
sions.

FIRE AND WATER AS SYMBOLS.

41. The elements Fireand Water were supposed to be those

in which the active and passive productive powers of the uni-
verse respectively existed '" since nothing appeared to be
;

''" It is by no means certain that revolution in government and worship.

Kronos, or Saturn, is identical with —A. W.
Chronos, or Time; and hence Mr. '*' Hesiod: Thcog. i5o.
Knight's solution of the allegory, '^^ Ovid: Metamorphoses, \. /^^o.
though ingenious, can hardly be enter- g^jpp^ ^^5 temperiem sumpsere humor-
tained. We notice again an example que calorque,
of playing upon words. Kronos, en- Concipiunt: et ab his oriuntur cuncta
duobus.
deavoring to devour his own sons, or
benim, is deceived with stones, or Hippocrates Diceta, i. 4. " All
:

abenim. The same play is perceived
in the words of John the Baptist
,' God is able of these stones (abenini)
to raise up children {benim) to Abra-
living creatures, not only the animals,
but likewise man, originate from the
Two Principles, differing in potency
but agreeing in purpose I mean Fire
:

ham " {Matthew, iii. 8). The whole and Water." " Fire is able to give life
stoiy has an Indian aspect. The tin- to all things, but water can nourish
gam represented the divine energy, them."
which, being removed, was equivalent lb. 8. " The soul moveth itself in
to the dethroning of the divinity. man, being the commixture of fire and
Thus, Cronos succeeded to Uranus, water, necessary to the human body."
the meaning of the allegory being a — et passim.

75
26 The Syjnboltcal Lang7tage of

produced without them and wherever they were joined there

;

was production of some sort, eitlier vegetable or animal.

Hence they were employed as the primary symbols of these
powers on numberless occasions. Among the Romans, a part
of the ceremony of marriage consisted in the bride's touching
them as a form of consecration to the duties of that state of
life upon which she was entering."'' Their sentence of banish-
ment, too, was an interdiction from fire and water, which
implied an exclusion from any participation in those elements,
to which all organised and animated beings owed their exis-
tence. Numa is said to have consecrated the Perpetual Fire, as
the First of all things, and the Soul of Matter, which, without it,
is motionless and dead.'" Fires of the same kind were, for the
same reasons, preserved in most of the principal temples both
Greek and Barbarian there being scarcely a country in the
;

world, where some traces of the adoration paid to it are not to

be found. "^ The Prytania of the Greek cities, in which the
Supreme Councils were usually held, and the public treasures
kept, were so called from the sacred fires always preserved in
them. Even common fires were reputed holy by them and ;

therefore carefully preserved from all contagion of impiety.

After the battle of Platsea, they extinguished all that remained
in the countries which had been occupied by the Persians, and
rekindled them, according to the direction of the Oracle, with
•consecrated fire from the altar at Delphi."" A similar preju-
dice still prevails among the native Irish, who annually extin-
guish their fires, and rekindle them from a sacred bonfire.'"
Perpetual lamps are kept burning in the inmost recesses of all
the great pagodas in India; the Hindus holding fire to be the
essence of all active power in nature. At Sais in Egypt, there
was an annual religious festival called the Burning of Lamps '" ;

and lamps were frequently employed as symbols upon

coins by the Greeks,"" who also kept them burning in the
tombs, and sometimes swore by them, as by known emblems of
the Deity.'" The torch held erect, as it was by the statue of
Bacchus at Eleusis,'" and as it is by other figures of him still
extant, means life while being reversed, as it frequently is
;

"^'Plutarch: Roman Questions. iv. 5. Lafitau: Mo:urs dcs Sauvages,

"Why do they direct the bride to i. 153.
touch fire and water? Is it not be- '^'Plutarch: Arlstides.
cause, as among the elements and "' Collect. Hibern. v. 64.
principles, the one is male and the "' HERODOTUS ii. 62. :

other female the one constitutes the

:
'^' See coins of Amphipolis, Alex-

principle of motion, and the other the ander tlie Great, c&c.
"
potency existing in Matter ? '*» Asclepiades Epigram, xxv.
:

'" Plutarch: Numa. from Brunck. Analect. \ ?i6.

'"^
HUET.: Dcmonstr. Evang. Prop., "' PauSANIAS : 1. c.

76
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 27

upon sepulchral urns and other monuments of the kind, inva-

riably signifies death or extinction.'"
42. Though water was thought
be the principle of the to
passive, as fire was yet, both being es-
of the active power ;

teemed unproductive when separate,"' both were occasionally

considered as united in each. Hence Vesta, whose symbol was
fire, was held to be equally with Ceres a personification of the

Earth,'" or rather of the genial heat which pervades it, to

whichits productive powers were supposed to be owing where- ;

fore her temple at Rome was of a circular form, having the

sacred fire in the centre, but no statue.'" She was celebrated
by the poets, as the daughter of Rhea, the sister of Jupiter and
Juno, and the first of the goddesses."" As the principle of
Universal Order, she presided over the Prytania or magisterial
seats, and was therefore the same as Themis, the direct per-
sonification of that attribute, and the guardian of all assem-
blies, both public and private, both of men and gods '*' whence, ;

all legislation was derived from Ceres, a more general per-

sonification including the same powers. The universal mother
of the Phrygians and Syrians, called by the Greeks Kubele or
Cybele, because represented under a globular or square form"'"
was the same more general personification worshipped with
different rites, and exhibited under different symbols, accord-
ing to the different dispositions and ideas of different nations.
She was afterward represented under the form of a large
handsome woman, with her head crowned with turrets and ;

very generally adopted as the local tutelar deity of particular

cities but we have never seen any figure of this kind, which
;

was not proved, by the style of composition and workman-

"' See Portland Vase, &c. Poly- /^^ y_ 201.

nices infers his own approaching death
from seeing in a vision {Stat. Theb. """"^ '''''™ '""'''
^fiVe^flamma.m""''"
xi. 142).
„ , '•*= Ovid:
.^cjA'. The temple is still
^^"^ '"" ,

""
r^Sm "" converted into a church, and
'='''^"'..

Effigiem. the ruins of another more elegant one,

Fire without moisture IS unnourisned ,4, 17 _„,„„„. n u j

J J J »! t 41. /ESCHYLUS: ,1.
Prometheus Bound,
dry, and water without warmth is
k
and „ r. it ^r • »
' Potters translation,
1
i-i J i-r " 1 200,
unprohiic and liieless.
'^^
VVKS^VKIVZ: Nature of the Gods, Now Gaia, under various names de-
signed.
xxviii. "But neither of the two,
Demeter or Hestia, is properly Lexicon, Antiq. Frag, de Herm.
''"'

distinct from the other, upon the Grainm. " Demeter, as the earth, is

earth." the tutelary of the state, whence she

Ovid Fast. lib. vi. v. 267.
: is described as the beaver of the tower.

VeSa eadem est qua Terra, subest vigil pybele is said to represent the earth,
' '
utrique. from the cubic figure in geometry.

77
28 The Symbolical Language of

ship, to be either posterior, or very little anterior to the Ma-

cedonian conquest.'"

VENUS-URANIA, THE MOTHER-GODDESS.

43. The characteristic attribute of the passive generative

power was expressed in symbolical writing, by different enig-
matical representations of the most distinctive characteristic
of the female sex ; such as the shell, or Concha Veneris,^'"'' the
Fig-leaf,"" Barley Corn,"' or the letter Delta '^ all which oc-
;

cur very frequently upon coins, and other ancient monuments

in this sense. The same attribute personified as the goddess
of Love or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous
form of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of
these symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names
of rather uncertain etymology.'" She is said to be the daugh-
ter of Jupiter and Dione that is, of the male and female per-
;

sonifications of the All-pervading Spirit of the Universe Dione ;

being, as before explained, the female Dis or Zeus, and there-

fore associated with him in the most ancient oracular temple
of Greece at Dodona. '" No other genealogy appears to have
been known in the Homeric times though a different one is ;

employed to account for the name of Aphrodite in the Theog-

ony attributed to Hesiod.
44. The GenetuUides or Genaidai were the original and ap-
"' It is most frequent on rbve ooias with the moon, and hence they were
of the Asiatic ooJonias ; hai afl that similarly employed as symbols,
we have seen with, srt are of late '" SuiDAS " Delta, the fourth let-
:

date, ter -
it also signifies the vulva."
>'» Augustin: 'Ikt City oj God, '" The
first may be from the vevb
vi.g. Clement of Aiexandria: .£.j:/;i;>?-- beindn, Suidas explaining Bsivoi
tations. " ThsKteis gtmakeios (wo- or BiroS to be the name of a goddess;
man's comb), which is, to speak with a and the name Venus only differs from
euphemism, and in mystic language, it in a well-known variation of dia-
the female sexual paits." lect.
'"Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, -id- The second may be from Kuo^ropiS,
" They make a figure of a fig-leaf, i. e. Hveir 7topiiSKOv(Sa, though the
both foi the king and southern climate, theogonists derive it from the island
which fig-leaf is interpreted to mean of Cyprus. Sc/ioi. Ven. on the Iliad,
the generating and fecundating of the v. 458. Hesiod : Theogony.
universe, for it seems to have some re- The third is commonly derived
semblance to the sexual parts of a from a^/iro.?, the foam of the sea, from
'™^'*' which she is fabled to have sprung ;
"^ EUSTATHIUS; On Homer. "
The but the name is older than the fable,
barley-corn, denoting the vulva among and doubtless received from some other
the writers upon the Bacchic ko- language. It is perhaps from the San-
'"^^^^- skrit, faradesa, a garden or beautiful
Clement: Exhortations, iii. " A woman or from Dis, the masculine
;

species of oysters in sympathy with of Dione.

the moon." There was a notion enter- "'Strabo: viii. 506. "In the
tained in ancient times that shell-fish same temple with Zeus, or Jupiter,
had some secret sympathy or relation was also the simulacrum of Dione."
7S
 .'?^^

Venus. Aphrodite.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 29

propriate ministers and companions of Venus,"'' who was,

however, afterward attended by the Graces, the proper and
original attendants of Juno '" but as both these goddesses
;

were occasionally united and represented in one image, "" the

personifications of their respective subordinate attributes
might naturally be changed. Other attributes were ou other
occasions added, whence the symbolical statue of Venus at
Paphos had a beard, and other appearances of virility,'*"
which seems to have been the most ancient mode of repre-
senting the celestial as distinguished from the popular goddess
of that name; the one being a personification of a general
procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or con-
cupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, when
advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant modes of dis-
tinguishing them and, in a celebrated work of Pheidias, we
;

find the former represented with her foot upon a tortoise, and
in a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter sitting upon
a goat.'™ The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was
aptly chosen as a symbol of the double power, and the goat
was equally appropriate to what was meant to be expressed in
the other.
45. The same attribute was on other occasions signified
by the dove or pigeon,'" by the sparrow,"' and perhaps by the
polypus, which often appears upon coins with the head of the
goddess, and which was accounted an aphrodisiac,'"' though
it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig was a still
more common symbol, the statues of Priapus being made of
the tree,'"' and the fruit being carried with the phallus in the

'=' Pausanias. ii. 4. but clothed in womanly robes, with

'" Iliad, xiv. Bryant's Translation.
" Do what I ask
And thou shall have from me a wedded
spouse;
the sceptre and height of a man."
'" "^^ Cesnola Collection at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in this
, city, is a bust, life-size, of this charac-
,, ,

^°""'^" '"> liolding ^patera on one hand, and

?hinef
Pasithea, whom thou hast desired so the mystic dove on the other. —
A. W.
long." 160 Pausanias : Eliac. ii. c. 25, s. 2.
Pausanias: C;r/«//2. xvii. 6, "The "'Plutarch: Isis and Osiris.
^^^//7/a of Hera (Juno) was seated on a "The Greeks made the the dove
throne of prodigious size, made of sacred animal of Aphrodite, the ser-
gold and ivory, the work of Polyklei- pent of Athena, the raven of Apollo,
tus. Upon it was a crown, having the and the dog of Artemis, or Diana."
Graces and the Hours wrought on it "* Eustathius On Homer. " The
:
;

and in her hands she bore a pome- sparrow is setapart to Aphro-

granate and a sceptre." dite, by reason of its fecundity, and
158 Pausanias: Laconia^ xiii. 6. its burning salacity, the same reason
" They called the ancient xoanon^ for which the dove is assigned to the
"stock," or wooden representation of Aphrodite of mythology."
Aphrodite, Hera." "^ Athen^us : Deipnosophista, ii.
"' Macrobius: iii, 34. " The figure 23.
of the Venus of Cyprus is bearded, "• Horace: Satires, i. viii.

81
30 The Symbolical Language of

ancient processions in honor of Bacchus,"' and still continu-

ing, among the common people of Italy, to be an emblem of
what it ancientl}' meant whence we often see portraits of per-
:

sons of that country painted with it in one hand, to signify

their orthodox devotion to the fair sex. Hence, also, arose
the Italian expression, /ar la fica, which was done by putting
the thumb between the middle and fore fingers, as it appears
in many Priapic ornaments now extant or by putting the ;

linger or the thumb into the corner of the mouth, and drawing
it down, of which there is a representation in a small Priapic

figure of exquisite sculpture engraved, among the Antiquities

of fferculaneum}"'

THE CROSS AND ROSARY.

46. The key, which is still worn, with the Priapic hand, as
an amulet, by the women of Italy, appears to have been an
emblem of similar meaning, as the equivocal use of the name
of it, in the language of that country, implies. Of the same
kind, too, appears to have been the cross in the form of the
letter tau, attached to a circle, 7-, which many of the figures of
.(Egyptian deities, both male and female, carry in the left-hand
and by which the Syrians, Phoenicians, and other inhabitants
of Asia, represented the planet Venus, worshipped by them as
the emblem or image of that goddess.'" The cross in this
form is sometimes observable on coins, and several of them
were found in a temple of Serapis, demolished at the general
destruction of those edifices by the emperor Theodosius, and
were said by the Christian antiquaries of that time to signify
the future life.'" In solemn sacrifices, all the Lapland idols
were marked with it from the blood of the victims "" and ;

it occurs on many Runic monuments found in Sweden and

Denmark, which are of an age long anterior to the approach

of Christianity to those countries, and, probably, to its ap-

"' Plutarch: Love of Wealth, vii. IV, act v. sc. 3, 3.ndJ!omeo and fuliet,
" The country-feast of the Dionysia act i. sc. i. Another old wriier,who
was anciently celebrated popularly probably understood Italian, calls the
and with merry-malcing. One carried \tM.t\ giving the fico ; and, according
an amphora of wine and clematis; toils ancient meaning, it might very
then one led a goat another followed
; naturally be employed as a silent re
carrying a basket of dried figs, on proach of effeminacy,
which was a phallus." "^ Proclus: Pamphr. Ptokm, lib,
"" Bronzi, tab. xciv. ii. p. 97. See also MiCHAEL Angelo:
It is to these obscene gestures that De la Chausse, part ii. no. xxxvi. fol.
the expressions oi figging and biting 62, and Jablonski: Panth. ALgypt.
the thumb, which Shakespeare prob- lib. ii. c. vii. s. 6.
ably took from translations of Italian "' SuiDAS in v. Taurus.
novels, seem to allude ; see i Henry "' Sheffer: Lapponic. c. x. p. 112.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 31

pearance in the world."" On some of the early coins of the

Phoenicians, we find it attached to a chaplet of beads placed in
a circle, so as to form a complete rosary, such as the Lamas of
Thibet and China, the Hindus, and the Roman Catholics, now
tell over while they pray.'"

47. Beads were anciently used to reckon time and a ;

circle, being a line without termination, was the natural em-

blem of its perpetual continuity whence we often find circles
:

of beads upon the heads of deities, and enclosing the sacred

symbols upon coins and other monuments.'" Perforated
beads are also frequently found in tombs, both in the northern
and southern parts of Europe and Asia, which are fragments
of the chaplets of consecration buried with the deceased. The
simple diadem, or fillet, worn round the head as a mark of
sovereignty, had a similar meaning, and was originally con-
fined to the statues of deities and deified personages, as we
find it upon the most ancient coins. Chryses, the priest of
Apollo, in the Iliad, brings tlie diadem, or sacred fillet, of the
god, upon his sceptre, as the most imposing and inviolable
emblem of sanctity but no mention is made of its being
;

worn by kings in either of the Homeric poems, nor of any

other ensign of temporal power and command, except the
royal staff or sceptre. ^

THE MYRTLE AND OTHER EMBLEMS.

48. The myrtle was a symbol both of Venus and Neptune,

the male and female personifications of the productive powers
of the waters, which appears to have been occasionally em-
ployed in the same sense as the fig and fig-leaf,"° but upon
what account, it is not easy to guess. Grains of barley may
have been adopted from the stimulating and intoxicating
quality of the liquor extracted from them,"* or, more prob-
ably,from a fancied resemblance to the object, which is much
heightened in the representations of them upon some coins,
where they are employed as accessory symbols in the same
manner as fig-leaves are upon others.'" Barley was also
'™ Ans. Rudbeckius: Atlant. p. ii. Plutakch : Ids and Osiiis. " The
662, and p. Ill, c. i. s. iii. Ol.
c. xi. p. fig-leaf is interpreted to denote drink-
Varellh: Scandagr. HuniCf'SiOKl.ASE: ing and motion (generation or gesta-
Hist. of Cornwall, p. io6. ticn), and is supposed to resemble the
'" Pellerin: Villes. T. iii. pi. cxxii. male sexual organ."
fig. 4. Archaol. vol. xvi. p. 2. Ni- "* Herodotus: ii. 77 :" The drink
choff. s. ix. Maurice : Indian An- of the Egyptians is a wine which they
tiguiiies, vol. v. obtain from barley, as they have no
'^^See Coins of Syracuse, lydia.. vines in their country."
"" See Coins of Syracuse, Marseilles, "' EUSTATHIUS: also Coins of Gela,
etc. Schol. in Aristoph. lysistr. 646. Leontium, and Selinus.

83
32 The Symbolical Language of

thrown upon the altar, with salt, the symbol of the preserving
power, at the beginning of every sacrifice, and thence denomi-
nated oulochutai."° The thighs of the victim, too, were sacri-
ficed in preference to every other part, on account of the gene-
rative attribute, of which they were supposed to be the seat,"'
whence, probably, arose the fable of Bacchus being nourished
and matured in the thigh of Jupiter.
49. Instead of beads, wreaths of foliage, generally of
laurel, olive, myrtle, ivy, or oak, appear upon coins, sometimes
encircling the symbolical figures, and sometimes as chaplets
on their heads. All these were sacred to some particular per-
sonifications of the deity, and significant of some particular
attributes, and, in general, all evergreens were Dionysiac
plants ;"' that is, symbols of the generative power, signifying
perpetuity of youth and vigor, as the circles of beads and dia-
dems signified perpetuity of existence. Hence the crowns of
laurel,olive, etc., with which the victors in the Roman
triumphs and Grecian games were honored, may properly be
considered as emblems of consecration to immortalitj^, and
not as mere transitory marks of occasional distinction. In
the same sense, they were worn in all sacrifices and feasts in
honor of the gods whence we find it observed by one of the
:

guests at an entertainment of this kind, that the host, by giv-

ing crowns of flowers instead of laurel, not only introduced
an innovation, but made the wearing of them a matter of
luxury instead of devotion.'" It was also customary, when
any poems sacred to the deity, such as those of a dramatic
kind, were recited at private tables, for the person reciting
to hold a branch of laurel in his hand,"" to signify that he was
performing an act of devotion as well as of amusement.

THE AMAZONS, OR VOTARIES OF THE DOUBLE-SEXED DEITY.

50. The Scandinavian goddess Freya had, like the Paphian

Venus, the characteristics of both sexes; "' and it seems prob-
1" EUSTATHIUS : On the Iliad. neys, and the fat that is upon them by
'" EUSTATHIUS : " They made
a the flanks and the caul above the
holocaust of the thighs, as being the livei." —
A. W.
honorable part, having taken them "* Straeo:xv. " Megasthenes says
:

from the other parts of the animals,
because they serve the animals in
walking and in generation in emitting
the semen."
In the same manner the book of
that the worshippers of Dionysus dis-
played for emblems the wild figs and
ivy, laurel, myrtle, the box, and other
evergreens."
"' Plutarcpi Symposiacs.: " Mak-
:

Leviticits prescribes the burning of ing the crown of pleasure, not of de-
" the fat and the whole rump by the votion."
backbone, and the fat that covereth ""• Aristophanes: Clouds, 1364.
the inwards, and all the fat that is '" Mallet : History of Denmark.
upon the inwards and the two kid- Introduction to, vii.

.S4
Coins. Cyrene, Perinthos, etc.
 :

Ancient Art and Mythology 33

able that the fable of the Amazons arose from some symbol-
ical composition upon which the Greek poets engrafted, as
;

they usually did, a variety of amusing fictions. The two

passages in the Iliad, in which they are slightly mentioned,
appear to us to be interpolations '" and of the tales which
;

have been circulated in later times concerning them, there is

no trace in either of the Homeric poems, though so intimately
connected with the subjects of both. There were five figures
of Amazons in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the rival
works of five of the most eminent Greek sculptors "'' and not- ;

withstanding the contradictory stories of their having placed

the ancient statue of the goddess, and been suppliants at her
altar,'" we suspect that they were among her symbolical at-
tendants, or personifications of her subordinate attributes.
In the great sculptured caverns of the island of Elephanta
near Bombay, there is a figure, evidently symbolical, with a
large prominent female breast on the left side, and none on
the right a peculiarity which is said to have distinguished
;

the Amazons, and given them their Greek name the growth ;

of the right breast having been artificially prevented, that

they might have the free use of that arm in war. This figure
has four arms and of those on the right side, one holds up
;

a serpent, and the other rests upon the head of a bull while ;

of those on the left, one holds up a small buckler, and the

other, something which cannot be ascertained.'" It is prob-
able that, by giving the full prominent form of the female
breast on one side, and the flat form of the male on the other,
the artist meant to express the union of the two sexes in this
emblematical composition which seems to have represented
;

some great deity of the people, who wrought these stupendous

caverns; and which, probably, furnished the Greeks with
their first notion of an Amazon. Hippocrates, however,
states that the right breast of the Sarmatian women was de-
stroyed in their infancy, to qualify them for war, in which
they served on horseback and none was qualified to be a
;

wife, till she had slain three enemies. This might have been
the foundation of some of the fables concerning a nati'on of
female warriors. The fine figure, nevertheless, of an Amazon
in Lansdowne House, probably an ancient copy of one of
those above mentioned, shows that the deformity of the one

"' Homer: Iliad, iii. and Tii. Bry- His third exploit— the man-like Ann-
^°°^-"
an t's Translation
" When came the unsexed Amazons to Pliny ,\xxiv. 8.
:

war." Pausanias: v. 30, and vu. I.

" And then he slew— i85
NiEBUHR : Voyages, vol. ii. t.-ib. vi,

87
34 The Symbolical Language of

breast was avoided by their great artists, though the bisexual

character is strongly marked throughout, in the counte-
nance, limbs, and body. On gems, figures of Amazons are
frequent, wliom Hercules, Theseus, or Achilles, had overcome;
but we have never observed any such compositions upon
coins.""
51. This character of the double sex, or active and passive
powers combined, seems to have been sometimes signified by
the large aquatic snail or buccinum an androgynous insect, ;

which we often find on the mystic monuments of the Greeks,"'

and of which the shell is represented radiated in the hands of
several Hindu idols,"" to signify fire and water, the princi-
ples from which this double power in nature sprang. The
tortoise is, however, a more frequent symbol of this attribute ;

though it might also have signified another : for, like the ser-
pent, extremely tenacious of life every limb and muscle
it is ;

retaining its sensibility long after its separation from the

body."" It might, therefore, have meant immortality, as well
as the double sex and we accordingly find it placed under
;

the feet of many deities, such as Apollo, Mercury, and

Venus "" and also serving as a foundation or support to tri-
;

'" E. Pococke derives

the term One legend represents Cadmus as
Amazon from the Sanscrit U/na- having married an Amazon, named
Soona, the children of Uma
or Bha- Sphinx. The
probabilities are, there-
vani. This would imply their relation fore, that the Amazons were priest-
to the Thugs, which their title Oior- esses of the goddess. Indeed, Calli
pata or man-slayers, would seem to machus states that the queen of the
corroborate. Amazons had daughters, known as the
The Amazons are mentioned as Peleiades, who were the first to insti-
occupying Northern Africa, to the ex- tute the circular dance and tV& panny-
treme west, as overrunning Libya and chis or watch-night. The designation
Asia Minor, invading Thrace and sev- is probably Phcenician from Am,
eral countries of Greece, and as con- mother, and Axon, or Adon, lord and ;

stituting the Sauromatse on the river tlieir occupation of various Moorish

Tanais. Their country in Asia Minor and Hamitic countries doubtless has
was often called Assyria and they ; reference to the institution of the
are reputed to have founded Ephesus, rites and worship of the Mother god-
Smyrna, Cyma, Murina, Paphos, and dess. They were called man-slayers,
other noted cities. Plato related that because they offered human victims to
Eumolpus led them against Athens. Diana.— A. W.
Clement mentions this leader as one '*' See silver Colne of Panormus and

of the Shepherds and he is credited

; Segesta, and brass of Agrigentura in
by Herakleitus with having instituted Sicily.
the Eleusinian Mysteries. Plato also "' See Sonnerat's, and other collec-
mentions the Statue of the Amazon tions of Hindu Idols.
It Athens. The grouping and arrang- '*"
jElian : De Animal., lib. iv. c.
ing of these legends affords opportu- xxviii.
nity for the solution. The Amazon 190 Plutarch: Conjugal Precepts,
at Athens was the Goddess Artemis or 138. "Pheidias made the Aphrodite
"Diana of the Ephesians," identical of the Elians standing on a tortoise,
with the Mother Goddess Anaitis, as a symbol to women keeping at
Astarte and Isis, whose worship was home and silence."
brought into Greece by the Shepherds. Pausanias : v. 25. " The agalma of

88
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 35

pods, pateras, and other symbolical utensils employed in re-

ligious rites. Hence, in the figurative language of the poets
and theologists, it might have been properly called the
support of the Deity ; a mode of expression, which probably
gave rise to the absurd fable of the world being supported on
the back of a tortoise which is still current among the
;

Chinese and Hindus, and to be traced even among the savages

of North America.'" The Chinese have, indeed, combined
the tortoise with a sort of flying serpent or dragon and thus ;

made a composite symbol expressive of many attributes.'"

THE COW-SYMBOL.

52. At Momemphis cow was the sym-

in ./Egypt, a sacred
bol of Venus Mnevis and Apis were of
[or Isis], as the bulls
the male personifications at Heliopolis and Memphis.'" The
Phoenicians employed the same emblem '" whence the Cad- ;

meians are said to have been conducted to the place of their

settlement in Boeotia by a cow, which pointed out the spot for
building the Cadmeion or citadel of Thebes, by lying down to
rest upon it.'"" This cow was probably no other than the
symbolical image of their deity, which was borne before them,
till fixed in the place chosen for their residence to which it ;

gave the name of Thebes Theba in the Syrian language

;

signifying a cow.'"" Hence we may perceive the origin of the

fable ofBacchus being born at Thebes for that city, being ;

called by the same name as the symbol of nature, was easily

confounded with it by the poets and mythologists by which ;

Urania (the celestial Venus) is made of movement into and out of the cara-
ivory and gold, and was the work of pace represented the acting Unga,
Pheidias. This statue stands with whilst a front view indicated the same
one foot on a tortoise. . . Another idea as the Hindu and Egyptian
statue stands on a brazen goat, the 'eye,' viz.; the Arba-Il, or four-fold
work of Scopas. . But as to what
. creator."
is signified by the tortoise and the ^'^'^'L.kyyykv : Mo;ursdes Sauvages,\.
goat, I leave to such as desire to 90.
guess." "' KiRCHER : China Illustrata, p.
Inman: Ancient Faiths Embodied in 187, col. 2.
'''
Ancient Names, i\. -p. iZl. Strabo ; lib. xvii. p. 552. See
" Where we notice its appearance also eund. p. 536, and .(Elian: Z>e
and remark the frequency with which it Anim. lib. xi. c. 27.
protrudes its head from the shell, thus "'' Porphyry : On Abstinence, lib.
changing its look of repose with the ii. p. 158.
utmost rapidity to one of energy and '•* Pausanias ; ix. p. 773. Schol.
action, we shall readily see why the in Aristoph. Frogs, \2%b. OYlv.Meta-
animal was said to be sacred to Venus, morph.
and why it is symbolic of regenera- ''* Scholia in Lycophror, v. 1206.
tion,immortality, and the like. The "Theba among the Syrians signifies a
tortoise, from the configuration of its cow."
head and neck, as well as their rapid See also Etymologicum Magnum.
35 The Symbolical Language of

means the generator Bacchus, the first-begotten Love, and

primary emanation of the all-pervading Spirit, became a
deified mortal, the son of a Cadmsean damsel.
53. The cow is still revered as a sacred symbol of the
deity, by the inhabitants of the Gold coast of Africa
'"'
and ;

more particularly by the Hindus among whom there is

;

scarcely a temple without the image of one and where the ;

attribute expressed by it so far corresponds with that of the

Grecian goddess Venus, as to be reputed the mother of the
God of Love. It is also frequently found upon ancient Greek
coins "' though we do not find that any public worship was
;

ever paid it by that people but it appears to have been held

:

sacred by all the African tribes adjoining Egypt, as far as the

Tritonian Lake;'"" among whom the Greek colonies of B area
and Gyrene were settled at an early period. In the Scandi-
navian mythology, the sun was fabled to recruit his strength
during winter by sucking the white cow Adumbla, the symbol
of the productive power of the earth, said to have been the
primary result of warmth operating upon ice, which the an-
cient nations of the north held to be the source of all
organised being.''"" On the Greek coins, the cow is most
commonly represented suckling a calf or young bull ""' who ;

is the mystic god Epaphus, the Apis of the .^Egyptians, fabled

by the Greeks to have been the son of Jupiter and lo.""

54. As men improved in the practice of the imitative arts,
they gradually changed the animal for the human form pre- ;

serving still the characteristic features, which marked its

symbolical meaning. Of this, the most ancient specimens now
extant are the heads of Venus or Isis (for they were in many
respects the same personification),"" upon the capitals of one
of the temples of Philse, an island in the Nile between ^gypt
and .(Ethiopia and in these we find the horns and ears of the
;

cow joined to the beautiful features of a woman in the prime

'" Hist. G^n. des Voyages, T. iii. whom they worship both with fasts
p.
392. and The Barcsean women
festivals.
"" See those of Dyrrachium, Cor- abstain not from cow's flesh only, but
cyra, etc. also from the flesh of swine."
'»» Herodotus: iv. 186. "Thus Olaus Rudbeckius
»»» : Atlantis,
from Egypt as far as Lake Tritonis, p. n, v. p. 235, and vi. p. 455.
Libya is inhabited by wandering tribes See Coins of Dyrrachium and
*"'

(nomades) whose drink is milk, and Parium.

'"''
their food the flesh of animals. Cow's Euripides Phomicians, 688.
:

flesh, however, none of these tribes '"^ Plutarch : Isis and Osiris. 53.
ever taste, but abstain from it for the " For Isis is the Female and receptive
same reason as the Egyptians, neither principle of generation, as by Plato
do any of them breed swine. Even and many others she is called nurse
at Cyrene the women think it wrong and niyrionumos, from having, in a
to eat the flesh of the cow, honoring word, innumerable forms and sem-
in this Isis, the ^Egyptian goddess, blances."
90
 lo at Canopus.

Discord on Olympos.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 37

of In the same manner the Greek sculptors of the

life.''"

finestages of the art represented lo,'" who was the same god-
dess confounded with an historical or poetical personage by
the extravagant imaginations of the Greek mythologists as ;

we shall further show have

in the sequel. Her name seems to
come from the north there being no obvious etymology for
;

it in the Greek tongue but, in the ancient Gothic and Scan-

;

dinavian, lo and Gio signified the earth as Isi and Isa signi- ;

fied ice, or water in its primordial state; and both were

equally titles of the goddess, that represented the productive
and nutritive power of the earth and, therefore, may afford a ;

more probable etymology for the name Isis, than any that has
hitherto been given.""" The god or goddess of Nature is
however called Isa in the Sanskrit,"" and many of the Egyp-
tian symbols appear to be Indian but, on the contrary, it ;

seems equally probable that much of the Hindu mythology,

and, as we suspect, all their knowledge of alphabetic writing,
as well as the use of money, came from the Greeks through the
Bactrian and Parthian empires the sovereigns of both which ;

appear to have employed the Grecian letters and language in

all their public acts.''""

SUN-WORSHIP AND THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION.

55. The .Egyptians, in their hymns to Osiris, invoked that
°°''
god as the being who dwelt concealed in the embraces of the sun ,•

and several of the ancient Greek writers speak of the great

luminary and nourisher of all things, the
itself as the generator'
rider of the world, the first of the deities, and the supreme Lord of
all mutable or perishable beings."" Not that they, any more than
the .Egyptians, deified the Sun considered merely as a mass of
luminous or fervid matter but as the centre or body, from
;

which the pervading Spirit, the original producer of order,

fertility, and organisation, amidst the inert confusion of space
and matter, still continued to emanate through the system, to
20^ NoRDEN ^gypt.
: are fanes or enclosures of Isis ; of
"" Herodotus ii. 41.: " The em- which they call one Pelasgian and one
blem of Isis is that of a woman hav- Egj'ptian, and two of Serapis, as he is
ing cow's horns as the Greeks make called in Canopus."
lo." ™* Pausanias Laconia, c. xii. s. 3.
:

™* Ol. Rudeeck: Atlaniica, p. i, c. *»' Plutarch

Isis and Osiris, 52.
:

xviii. & XX. p. 854, p. II, c. V. p. 208- "In the sacred hymns of Osiris, they
214, 340, & 451. Edda Snorron. Myth. called upon the One hidden in the
iv. embrace of the sun."
^'" Sakoontala. There were two god- -"' Orphic Fragments. " Sun, the
desses of the name of Isis worshipped Father of all."
in Greece, the one Pelasgian and the Sophocles CEdiptis Tyrannus, 660
:

other .(^igyptian, before the Pantheic and 1424. " The god Hallos, chief of
Isis of the latter ages. all the gods," "the royal sun which
Pausanias Corinth, iv. 7. " There
: feedeth all."

93
 "

38 The Symbolical Language of

preserve the mighty structure which it had formed.^" This

primitive pervading Spirit is said to have made the sun to
guard and govern all things,"' it being thought the instru-
mental cause, through which the powers of reproduction, im-
planted in matter, continued to exist for without a continued ;

emanation from the active or male principle of generation, the

passive or female principle, which was derived from it, would
of itself become exhausted.
56. This continued emanation, the Greeks personified into
two distinct personages, the one representing Celestial Love,
or attraction, and the other, animal love or desire, to which the
^Egyptians added a third, by personifjang separately the great
fountain of attraction, from which both were derived. All the
three were, however, but one, the distinctions arising merely
out of the metaphysical subtilty of the theologists, and the
extravagant allegories of the poets, which have a nearer re-
semblance to each other than is generally imagined.
57. This productive asthereal spirit being expanded through
the whole universe, every part was in some degree impreg-
nated with it, and therefore every part was, in some measure,
the seat of the deity, whence local gods and goddesses were
everywhere worshipped, and consequently multiplied without
end. " Thousands of the immortal progeny of Jupiter," says
Hesiod, " inhabit the fertile earth, as guardians to mortal
men." "'' An adequate knowledge, either of the number or
attributes of these, the Greeks never presumed to think attain-
able, but modestly contented themselves with revering and in-
voking them whenever they felt or wanted their assistance."'
If a shipwrecked mariner were cast upon an unknown shore,
he immediately offered up his prayers to the gods of the
country, whoever they were,"' and joined the inhabitants in

'^'i
Plutarch : Roman Questions: that " the gods are well pleased with
and Orphic Fragments. invocations addressed to them in the
^'* Orphic Fragments, xxv. Egyptian and Assyrian dialects, as
'"'Hesiod: Weeks and Days, \22. being ancient and cognate languages
2" Philemon Fragments. " Revere: of their own." The Oracle of Zoro-
and worship God seeli not to know ; aster a.\%o commanded as follows:
more ^thou needest seek nothing
;
" Never change barbarous names
;
further." For there are names in every nation given
Menander : Fragments. "Who ,,
from God,
Having unspeakable erncacv m
. .

the
,,
Mys-
GodJ J
/-, . .
* .1 1,
IS, desire not to
..

learn they who

,

;
"
teries
desire to know what may not be
^he Orphic hymn also instructs the
known are impious.
worshipper:
'" Homer: 445. "Hear
Oi/wj-fi', v. „^,^ ,.-, .u ,, u ,.,.,

me, oh king, whoever thou art." ^h^^e

fllme';
"' °
A
particular merit pertained to the Address each godhead by his mystic name:
use of foreign and antique titles of the Full well the Immortals all are pleased to
deities. The Samothracians used a ThekTecret names rise in the muttered
sacred language. lamblichus declared prayer."

94
 Ajicient Art and Mythology. 39

whatever modes of worship they employed to propitiate

them,"" concluding that all expressions of gratitude and sub-
mission must be pleasing to the Deity; and as for other ex-
pressions, he was not acquainted with them, cursing, or in-
voking the divine wrath to avenge the quarrels of men, being
unknown to the public worship of the ancients. The Atheni-
ans, indeed, in the fury of their resentment for the insult
offered to the mysteries, commanded the priestess to curse
Alcibiades ; but she had the spirit to refuse, saying, that she
was the priestess of prayers, and not of airses."''

LIBERALITY AND SAMENESS OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS.

58. The same liberal and humane spirit still prevails

among those nations whose religion is founded in the same
principles. " The Siamese," says a traveller of the seventeenth
century, " shun disputes, and believe that almost all religions
are sood.""' When the ambassador of Louis XIV. asked
their king, in his master's name, to embrace Christianity, he
replied, " that it was strange that the king of France should
interest himself so much in an affair which concerned only
God, whilst He, whom it did concern, seemed to leave it
wholly to our discretion. Had it been agreeable to the Crea-
tor that all nations should have had the same form of worship,
would it not have been as easy to his Omnipotence to have
created all men with the same sentiments and dispositions,
and to have inspired them with the same notions of the True
Religion, as to endow them with such different tempers and
inclinations Ought they not rather to believe that the true
.''

God has as much pleasure in being honored by a variety of

forms and ceremonies, as in being praised and glorified by a
number of different creatures } Or why should that beauty
and variety, so admirable in the natural order of things, be
less admirable, or less worthy of the wisdom of God in the
supernatural ? " "'
59. The Hindus profess exactly the same opinion. "They
would readily admit the truth of the Gospel," says a very
learned writer, long resident among them, "but they contend
that it is perfectly consistent with their Shastras. The Deity,
they say, has appeared innumerable times in many parts of this
^'^
Homer : Odyssey, iii. people required her to do it : for she
"' Plutarch : Roman Questions, said that she was a priestess for prayer
44. " An execration is a fearful and and not for cursing."
'"'
grievous thing. Wherefore, the priest- Journal du Voyage de Siam.
ess at Athens was commended for re- '" Voyage de Siam, lib. v.
fusing to curse Alkibiades when the

95
 ;

40 The Symbolical Language of

world, and of all worlds, for the salvation of his creatures and ;

though we adore him in one appearance, and they in others,

yet we adore, they say, the same God to whom our several ;

worships, though different in form, are equally acceptable, if

''^°
they be sincere in substance."
60.The Chinese sacrifice to the spirits of the air, the moun-
tains and the rivers while the Emperor himself, sacrifices to
;

the sovereign Lord of Heaven, to whom these spirits are sub-

ordinate, and from whom they are derived."' The sectaries of
Fohi have, indeed, surcharged this primitive elementary wor-
ship with some of the allegorical fables of their neighbors
but still as their creed, like that of the Greeks and Romans,
remains undefined, it admits of no dogmatical theology, and,
of course, of no persecution for opinion. Obscene and san-
guinary rites have, indeed, been wisely proscribed on many
occasions but still as actions and not as opinions™ Atheism is
;

said to have been punished with death at Athens; but never-

theless, it may be reasonably doubted, whether the atheism,
against which the citizens of that republic expressed such fury,
consisted in a denial of the existence of the gods for Diago- ;

ras, who was obliged to fly for this crime, was accused of re-
vealing and calumniating the doctrines taught in the Myste-
""'
ries ; and, from the opinions ascribed to Socrates, there is
reason to believe that his offense was of the same kind, though
he had not been initiated.
61. These two were the only martyrs to religion among the
ancient Greeks, except such as were punished for actively vio-
lating or insulting the Mysteries, the only part of their wor-
ship which seems to have possessed any vitality; for as to the
popular deities, they were publicly ridiculed and censured
with impunity, by those who dared not utter a word against
the very populace that worshipped them "* and, as to forms :

and ceremonies of devotion, they were held to be no otherwise

important, than as they constituted a part of the civil govern-
ment of the state the Pythian priestess having pronounced
;

from the tripod; that whoever performed the rites of his religion
according to tlie laws of his country, performed them in a manner
pleasing to the Deity.'''''' Hence the Romans made no alterations
in the religious institutions of any of the conquered countries ;

-"Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. -'' See the /';ww//;tv« of jEschylus,

274. and the Plains and Frogs of Aris-
--'
Du Halde: vol. i. p. 32. tophanes, which are full of blasphe-
•'- lAV^: Histoiy,xxyiix.<). Seethe mies the former serious, and the lat-
;

proceedings against the rites and wor- ter comic or rather farcical,
shippers of Bacchus at Rome. '" Xenophon: Memorabilia,X\\> i.e.
2'^ Tatian : AdGrcEc. iii. s. i.

06
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 41

but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and extravagant

as they pleased, and even to enforce their absurdities and ex-
travagances, wherever they had any pre-existing laws in their
favor. An Egyptian magistrate would put one of his fellow-
subjects to death for killing a cat or a monkey ^'^' and though
the religious fanaticism of the Jews was too sanguinary and
violent to be left entirely free from restraint, a chief of the
synagogue could order any one of his congregation to be
whipped for neglecting or violating any part of the Mosaic
Ritual.'"
62. The
principle underlying the system of Emanations
was, that things were of one substance from which they were
all ;

fasiiioned, and into which they were again dissolved, by the

operation of one plastic spirit universally diffused and expand-
ed.'"" The polytheist of ancient Greece and Rome candidly
thought, like the modern Hindu, that all rites of worship and
forms of devotion were directed to the same end, though in
different modes and through different channels. ''Even they
who worship other gods," says Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an
ancient Indian poem, " worship me, although they know it not." "'

WHY DIVINE HONORS WERE PAID TO ANIMALS AND PLANTS.

63. By this universal expansion of the creative Spirit, every

production of earth, water, and air, participated in its essence ;

which was continually emanating from, and reverting back to

its source in various modes and degrees of progression and re-
gression, like water to and from the ocean. Hence not only
men, but all animals, and even vegetables, were supposed to
be impregnated with some particles of the Divine nature from ;

which their various qualities and dispositions, as well as their

powers of propagation were thought to be derived. These
appeared to be so many different emanations of the Divine
power operating in different modes and degrees, according to
'^«
Tertullian: Apol. c. xxiv. Ocean breeds beneath its marble sur-
'" See Acts of the Apostles, v. 40. face. They all possess a fiery potency,
'-8 Aristotle Metaphys. i. 3, c. iii.
: and in their seed is a celestial piin-
Virgil: Aineid, vi. 724-734. " First ciple, — so far as they are not clogged
of all,the Inmost Spirit sustains the by noxious bodies, their limbs impeded
heaven and Earth and Ocean, the illu- by earthy substance, and all their
minated orb of the Moon, and the Ti- members moribund. Hence they fear
tanical Stars [planets] and the Mind,
; and desire, grieve and rejoice nor ;

diffused through all the members, gives do they, thus enclosed in darkness and
emergy to the whole frame and mingles a gloomy prison, behold the heavenly
itself intimately with the great body, air."
Thence proceed the race of men and See also Plutarch, in Rom. p. 76
beasts, and the living souls of birds, et Cicero: De
Divinit. lib. ii. c. 4g.
and the monstrous brutes which the ^^' Bhagavat -Gita ix. ,

97
 :

42 The Symbolical Language of

the nature of the substances with which they were combined

whence the characteristic properties of particular animals and
plants were regarded, not only as symbolical representations,
but as actual emanations of the Supreme Being, consubstantial
with his essence, and participating in his attributes.^" For
this reason, the symbols were treated with greater respect and
veneration, than if they had been merely signs and characters
of convention and, in some countries, were even substituted
;

as objects of adoration, instead of the Deity whose attributes

they were meant to signify.
64. Such seems to have been the case in ^Egypt where va- ;

rious kinds of animals, and even plants, received divine honors ;

concerning which much has been written, both in ancient and

modern times, but very little ascertained. The Egyptians them-
selves would never reveal anything concerning them, as long
as they had anything to reveal, unless under the usual ties of
secresy wherefore Herodotus, who was initiated, and conse-
;

quently understood them, declines entering into the subject,

and apologises for the little which the general plan of his work
has obliged him to say.^" In the time of Diodorus Siculus the
priests pretended to have some secret concerning them but •^'''^

they probably pretended to more science than they really pos-

sessed, in this, as well as in other instances for Strabo, who ;

was contemporary with Diodorus, and much superior to him

in learning, judgment, and sagacity, says that they were mere
sacrificers without any knowledge of their ancient philosophy
and religion.^^^ The symbolical characters called hieroglyphics,
continued to be esteemed more holy and venerable than the
conventional signs for sounds but though they pretended to
:

read, and even to write them,"" the different explanations

which they gave to different travellers, induce us to suspect
that it was all imposture and that the knowledge of the an-
;

cient hieroglyphics, and consequently of the symbolical

meaning of the sacred animals, perished with their Hierarchy
under the Persian and Macedonian kings. "° We may indeed
'™ Proclus : Theology of Plato, pp. ''^ Diodorus : i. 96 :
" Their priests
56, 57. have a secret doctrine concerning
**' Herodotus: 65 : " The ani-
ii. them."
mals which exist in Egypt, whether ^^' Strabo: xvii. p. 806.
°^'^
domesticated or otherwise, are all re- See the curious inscription in
garded as sacred. If I was to explain honor of Ptolemy V. published by the
why they are consecrated to the sev- Society of Antiquaries of London,
eral gods, I would be led to speak of 1803.
sacred matters, which I particularly '^^'
The discovery of the Rosetta
shrink from mentioning the points on
; Stone, and the researches of Champol-
which I have touched slightly hitherto lion, Bunsen, and other able savaas
have all been introduced from sheer have disproved this, and demonstrated
necessity." that the concealing of the sacied
9S
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 43

safely conclude that all which they told of the extensive con-
quests and immense empire of Sesostris, etc., was entirely fic-
tion ; Palestine must from its situation have been
since
among the first of those acquisitions and yet it is evident;

from the sacred writings, that at no time, from their emigra-

tion to their captivity, were the ancient Hebrews subject to
the kings of iEgypt whose vast resources were not derived
;

from foreign conquests, but from a river, soil, and climate,

which enabled the labor of few to find food for many, and
which consequently left an immense surplus of productive
labor at the disposal of the state or of its master.""

IMPROBABIUTY OF THE NED-PLATONIC INTERPRETATIONS.

65. early as the second century of Christianity, we find

As
that an entirely new system had been adopted by the iEgyp-
tian priesthood, partly drawn from the writings of Plato and
other Greek and Oriental sages, and partly invented among
themselves. This they contrived to impose, in many instances,
upon Plutarch, Apuleius, and Macrobius, as their ancient
creed and to this lamblichus attempted to adapt their ancient
;

allegories, and Hermapion and HorapoUo, their symbolical

sculptures; all which they very readily explain, though
their explanations are wholly inconsistent with those given to
Herodotus, Diodorus, and Germanicus which are also equally ;

inconsistent with each other. That the ancient system should

have been lost, is not to be wondered at, when we consider
meaning of the hieroglyphics was but Deuteronomy vii. 20, and Joshica xxiv.

a part of the obligation of those under-
standing them. A. W. —
''^^
Herodotus ii. 14. The conclu-
: Hittites, and other populations of
sion of Mr. Knight is hardly tenable.
The Egyptian sculptures and papyri
contain numerous memorials of the
conquest of Northern Arabia, Pales-
tine, Syria, Lebanon, Hamath, Car-
chemish, and Naharayn, or Mesopo-
tamia, and even Ninevah and Media.
Six thousand years ago naval battles
occurred between the Egyptians and
the nations beyond the Mediterranean
and thirty-six centuries ago an inva-
sion of Egypt by the confederated
armies of Libya and Europe was re-
pulsed. The recentne.ss of the He-
brew manuscripts must weaken their
evidence. None of them are a thou-
sand years old; and their compilation
hardly antedates the period of the
Maccabees, or the Persian conquests,
Yet they mention {Exodus xxiii. 28,
99
11, 12) the ^y^V tzirah, hornet or
plague, that overcame the Amorites,
Palestine; and the Egyptian records
term the Hyk-sos or Shepherds " the
scourge" or "plague" who were driv.
en by Aah-mosis and Thoth-mosis into
Syria. (See The Nation, New York,
for May 13, i86g.) Josephus, in his
first treatise against Apion, distinctly
asserts that the ancestors of the Israel-
ites (meaning the Hyk-sos) once had
dominion over the Egyptians; and
Professor J. P. Lesley, declaring the
earlier Jewish legends unhistorical,
adds that " nothing prevents us from
identifying the Hebrews of the Mon-
archy as descendants of the Hyk-sos
race," Certainly "unhistorical" le-
gends should not be employed, as Mr.
Knight has employed them, against
—
monumental records. A. W.
44 The Symbolical Language of

the many revolutions and calamities, which the country suf-

fered during the long period that elapsed from the conquest
of it by Cambyses to that by Augustus. Two mighty mon-
archs of Persia employed the power of that vast empire to de-
stroy their temples and extinguish their religion and though ;

the mild and stately government of the first Ptolemies afforded

them some relief, yet, by introducing a new language, with
new principles of science and new modes of worship, it tended
perhaps to obliterate the ancient learning of .^gypt, as much
as either the bigotry of their predecessors, or the tyranny of
their successors.
dd. It is probable that in .^Egypt, as in other countries, zeal
and knowledge subsisted in inverse proportions to each other ;

hence those animals and plants, which the learned respected

as symbols of Divine Providence acting in particular direc-
tions, because they appeared to be impregnated with particu-
lar emanations, or endowed with particular properties, might
be worshipped with blind adoration by the vulgar, as the real
images of the gods. The cruel persecutions of Cambyses and
Ochusmust necessarily have swept off a large proportion of the
former class whence this blind adoration probably became
;

general different cities and districts adopting different animals

;

same manner as those of mod-

for their tutelar deities, in the
ern Europe put themselves under the protection of different
saints, or those of China under that of particular subordinate
spirits, supposed to act as mediators and advocates with the
supreme God."'

AUGURY AND VATICINATION.

67. From the system of emanations came the opinion so

prevalent among the ancients, that future events might be
predicted by observing the instinctive motions of animals, and
more especially those of birds which, being often inexplica-
;

ble from any known principles of mental operation, were sup-

posed to proceed from the immediate impulse of the Deity.
The skill, foresight, and contrivance, which many of them dis-
play in placing and constructing their nests, is wholly unac-
countable; and others seem to possess a really prophetic
spirit, owing to the extreme sensibility of their organs, which
enables them to perceive variations of the state of the atmos-
phere, preceding a change of weather, long before they are
perceptible to us."' The art of interpreting their various

"' Du Halde: ii. p. 49.

''^s
Virgil : Georgics, i. 415. Am-
MIAN. Marcellin. lib. vxi. c. I.

100
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 45

and actions seems to have been in repute during the

flights
Homeric times, but to have given way, by degrees, to the
oracular temples which naturally acquired pre-eminence by
;

affording a permanent establishment, and a more lucrative

trade, to the interpreters and deliverers of predictions.
68. The same ancient system that produced augury, pro-
duced Oracles for the human soul, as an emanation of the
;

Divine Mind, was thought by many to be in its nature pro-

phetic, but to be blunted and obscured by the opaque incum-
brance of the body through which it, however, pierced in fits
;

of ecstasy and enthusiasm, such as were felt by tlhe Pythian

priestesses and inspired votaries of Bacchus."^" Hence pro-
ceeded the affected madness and assumed extravagance of
those votaries, and also the sanctity attributed to wine
which, being the means of their inspiration, was supposed to
be the medium of their communion with the Deity to whom ;

it was accordingly poured out upon all solemn occasions, as

the pledge of union and bond of faith whence treaties of ;

alliance and other public covenants were anciently called

Spondaiox libations. Even drinking it to intoxication was in
some cases an act of devotion "" and the vine was a favorite
;

symbol of the deity, which seems to have been generally em-

ployed to signify the generative or preserving attribute °" ;

intoxicating liquors being stimulative, and therefore held to

be aphrodisiac. The vase is often employed in its stead, to
express the same idea, and is usually accompanied by the
same accessory symbols."^
61). It was for the same reason, probably, that the poppy

was consecrated to Ceres, and her statues crowned with it "" ;

and that Venus was represented holding the cone of it in one

hand, while the other held an apple, and the nokoi or modius
decorated her head;"" for the juice of the poppy is stimulative
and intoxicating to a certain degree, though narcotic when
taken to excess.

•m Plutarch • The Failure of the drunkenness, except at festivals and

Oracles. of wine set apart to the deity."
Euripides : Bacchcs. " The Bac- "' See Coins of Maronea, Soli Nax-
chic impulse, and the manias contain us, etc.
much of the prophetic power. When ''^^
See Coins of Thebes, Haliartus,
the God entereth the body, he causeth Hipponium, etc.
the raving ones to speak." ^''^
Virgil " Cereale
: papaver."
Plato : Phccdrus, 43. " The soul See Coins of Seleucus IV.
is in some measure prophetic." °-^
Pausanias : Corinth, x. 4. " He
'^^''
Seleucus from the Deipnoso-
: made the bust of Aphrodite, sitting
phisice: ii. 3 ; also Diogenes Laer- * * having on the head the polos of
Tius:iii. 39: " He (Plato) said that it gold and ivory, and in one hand a
was becoming for no one to drink to poppy-head, and in the other an apple."
T03
46 The Symbolical Langtiage of

PROPHETIC ECSTASY.

70. By yielding themselves to the guidance of wild imag-

ination, and wholly renouncing common sense, which evi-
dently acted by means of corporeal organs, men hoped to give
the celestial faculties of the soul entire liberty, and thus to
penetrate the darkness of futurity in which they often be- ;

lieved themselves successful, by mistaking the disordered

wanderings of a distempered mind for the ecstatic effusions of
supernatural perception. This sort of prophetic enthusiasm
was sometimes produced, or at least supposed to be pro-
duced, by certain intoxicating exhalations from the earth as ;

was the case at Delphi where the design of setting up an ora-

;

cle was first suggested by the goats being observed to skip

about and perform various extravagant gesticulations, as often
as they approached a certain fissure in the rock.°" It is said
to have been founded by some Hyperboreans, and principall)-
by the bard Olen, a priest and prophet of Apollo "° but :

women ofiiciated there as far back as any certain tradi-

tions could be traced ; they having, probably, been preferred
on account of the natural weakness of the sex, which rendered
them more susceptible of enthusiastic delirium, to promote
which, all the rites practiced before the responses were given,
particularly tended."'
Figures holding the poppy in one prophets to preserve the nation was be-
hand and the patera in the other, are lieved to have continued from Moses till
upon the medals of Tarentum and the later periods, and rules were given
Locri, in Italy. for knowing their genuineness {Deute-
The laurel was also supposed to ronomy,ii.\\\\. 15-22 and xiii. 1-5, also
have a stimulative and intoxicating Hosea, xii. 13). When Balak the king
quality, and therefore to be the proper of Moab brought Balaam to the hill of
symbol for the god of poetry and Peor and high-places of Baal to curse
prophecy. Israel, the changing of the purpose of
"' Plutarch : The Failure of the the prophet by the Lord, appears to
Oracles. have been regarded as necessaiy to
•i46
Pausanias: x. 5. prevent possible calamity. It is very
"' The oracles doubtless originat- singular, however, that after Samuel
ed from the belief that as the human had been the judge or chief magis-
soul was the emanation or offspring of trate till he was old, and might be
the deity, it possessed a faculty of supposed to have acquired a wide
communication with the higher pow- reputation in that capacity, Saul and
ers, capable of being cultivated or de- his servants should seek from him in
veloped, to the function of seership. his character of seer or man of God,
The JMysteries seem to have been con- with a fee, to learn whether to go in
ducted on this hypothesis and in all
; quest of fugitive animals. The de-
countries, there have been persons signation amphi or om-phe was ap-
reputed to be capable of comprehend- plied to the oracles, whence the
ing the purposes of the Deity. Among onipha-el of the temple at Delphi was
the Israelites the prayer of Abraham termed by the Greeks who interpreted
was supposed to heal the household of by sound rather than sense the
Abimelech ;
and a succession of omphalos or navel-stone of the world,
104
 Rhea. Ceres.

AphroditCj Hermes, Herakles, Athena, and Apollo.

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 47

71. The inspiring exhalation was at first attributed to the

Earth only; then to the Earth in conjunction with Neptune
or the Sea; and lastly to Apollo or the Sun.'" These were,
however, only diflferent modifications of one cause, always
held to be unalterably the same, though supposed to act, at
difierent times, in different ways, and by different means.
This cause was Jupiter, the all-pervading spirit of the uni-
verse, who had the title of All-prophetic,'" because the other
deities presiding over oracular temples were merely personifi-
cations of his particular modes of action.^'" The Pelasgian, or
rather Druidical oracle of Dodona, the most ancient known,
immediately belonged to him ; the responses having been
originally delivered by certain priests, who pretended that
they received them from the oaks of the sacred grove ;"' which,
being the largest and strongest vegetable productions of the
North, were employed by the Celtic nations as symbols of the
supreme God;''" whose primary emanation, or operative spirit,

the symbol of the Mother Goddess. by the circumstance that the pythoness
The priestess or alma at Delphi was was supposed to derive her mystical
sometimes called Pythoness, from the gift by the inhaling of an exhilarating
serpent Python, the representative of gas, or vapor from a cleft or fissure in
Apollo he in turn was called Amphi-
; the ground, a cunnus diaholi. The
anax or king of the oracle. The Egyptians denominated the inter-
Supreme Council or Parliament of the preter of oracles, Peter and the ;

twelve nations of the Greeks was names Orpheus, Pompeius, Ampelus,

called Amphictyonic, either because its and perhaps Patrick, may have a similar
decrees were regarded as sacred or meaning. A. W.—
"* Pausanias: lib. x.
from being held at the place of the
oracle. Hermes was styled Pompseus, ''*'
Panomphaios.
as the messenger of God of the ora- ''° See Pindar Olymp. : viii. 58,
cle; and the city of Campania now Lucan has expressed ancient my-
this
celebrated for its magnificent ruins, stic dogma in the language of the
was evidently so designated as a holy Stoics and modified it to their sys-
;

city, or place of oracles. The Pom- tem, according to the usual practice of
peian pillars and columns of Hercules the Syncretic sects. Pharsalia, v. 93 :

are therefore identical. The use of Forsan terris inserta regendis

the term nymp/ie, or its deriva- Acre libratum vacuo quse sustinet orbem,
tions to designate young women, Totius pars magna Jovis Cirrh^a per
antra
brides, the marriage chamber, the lo- Exit, et aetherio trahitur connexa Tonanti.
tus flower {Nymphcea Nelumbo) the Hoc ubi virgineo conceptum est pectore
nymphaa or oracular temples (fire- numen,
mountains) and the labics minores of
Humanam feriens animam sonat, oraque
vatis.
the human female, illustrates the fact Solvit.
that to femininity there was supposed See also Ammian. Marcellin : xxi.
to pertain a peculiar divine virtue. c. I.
Women were supposed to be more '" Homer Iliad, xvi.
: Bryant's
receptive of the divine afflatus and ;
Translation :

the symbols of their sex participated " Dodonian Jove, Pelasgian, sovereign
in the veneration and sanctity. Ora- king.
cles existed where the Mother Goddess Whose dwelling is afar, and who dost
rule
was worshipped, who indeed was Dodona winter-bound, where dwell thy
named Nympha. The name of the priests.
place of the oracle of Python-Apollo The Selh, with unwashen feet, who sleep
was called Delphi from delphus^ the Upon the ground " !

womb, which fact is further illustrated ^'^ Maximus Tyrius : Dissertation,

107
48 The Symbolical Laiigziage of

seems to have been signified by the mistletoe which grew

from its bark, and, as it were, emanated from its substance
whence probably came the sanctity attributed to the plant.
72. Such symbols seem once to have been in general use;
for among theA^ulgar, the great preservers of ancient customs,
they continued to be so down to the latest periods of Heathen-
ism " The shepherd," says Maximus Tyrius, " honors Pan
:

by consecrating to him the high fir and deep cavern, as the

husbandman does Bacchus by sticking up the rude trunk of
a tree.""" Art and refinement gradually humanised these
primitive emblems, as well as others; but their original mean-
ing was still preserved in the crowns of oak and fir, which dis-
tinguished the statues of Jupiter and Pan, in the same manner
as those of other symbolical plants did those or other personi-
fications.""
73. The sanctity, so generally attributed to groves by the
barbarians of the North, seems to have been imperfectly trans-
mitted from them to the Greeks for the poets, as Strabo ob- :

serves, call any sacred place a grove, though entirely destitute

of trees;"" so that they must have alluded to these obsolete
symbols and modes of worship. The Selloi, the priests of Do-
dona, mentioned in the Iliad, had disappeared, and been re-
placed by women long time before Herodotus, who relates
some absurd tales, which he heard in .^Egypt, concerning their
having come from that country.'" The more prompt sensibil-
viii. 8. The rude trunk was the the story went that one of them was
"stock" so often denounced in the sold into Libya, and the other into
—
Old Testament. A. W. Greece, and these women were the
*'^ See ibid.
p. 79 also Pliny; ii.
; first founders of the oracles in the two
I., and Tacitus Germany. Even
: countries.' . . At Dodona the wo-
as late as the eighth century of men who deliver the oracles relate the
Christianity, it was enacted by Luit- matter as follows : Two black doves
'

prand, king of the Lombards, that
whoever paid any adoration or per-
formed any incantation to a tree,
should be punished by fine. Paul,
DiACON.: De Leg. Longohard.
*'* See heads of Jupiter of Dodona
on the coins of Pyrrhus.
'^''Strabo: iv. "The
nify them, calling all the s.icred enclos-
ures groves, even though bare of
trees."
"'Herodotus: ii. 54,
following tale is told in Egypt con-
cevning the oracle of Dodona in
Greece, and that of Amun in Libya,
My informants on the points were
priests of Zeus (Amun) in Thebes.
They said that two of the sacred
* at Dodona. Sir G. Wilkinson remarks
women were once carried
Thebes by the Phoenicians
flew away from Egyptian Thebes, and
while one directed its flight to Libya,
the other came to them. She alighted
on an oak, and sitting there began to
speak with a human voice, and told
them that on the spot where she was,
there should thenceforth be an oracle
poets dig- of Zeus. . . The dove which went
to Libya bade the Libyans to estab-
"
lish there the oracle of Amun.'
The oak of Dodona indicates the
55. "The kinship of Druidism with the ancient
Pelasgian worship. R. Payne Knight
suggests that the story of the doves
probably arose from the mystic dove
on the head of Dione, as Juno or
Aphrodite was anciently denominated
oft' from that " the two doves appear to connect
, and that this tradition with the Phoenician
108
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 49

ity was more susceptible of enthusiastic emo-

of the female sex
and consequently better adapted to the prophetic office,
tions,
which was to express inspiration rather than convey mean-
ing.

ENTHUSIASTIC FRENZY AT THE RELIGIOtrS ORGIES.

74. Considering the general state of reserve and restraint

in which the Grecian women lived, it is astonishing to what
an excess of extravagance their religious enthusiasm was car-
ried on certain occasions particularly in celebrating the Orgies
;

of Bacchus. The gravest matrons and proudest princesses

suddenly laid aside their decency and their dignit)^, and ran
screaming among the woods and mountains, fantastically
dressed or half-naked, with their hair dishevelled and inter-
woven with ivy or vine, and sometimes with living serpents."'
In this manner they frequently worked themselves up to such
a pitch of savage ferocity, as not only to feed upon raw flesh,'"'
but even to tear living animals with their teeth, and eat them
warm and palpitating."''"
Astarte, who appears to be the Baaltis probably with Maha Deva of India ;

or Dione of Byblus." He thinks that and in the Grecian pantheon he ap-

the origin of the oracle would not
have been attributed to a foreigner
unless there had been some founda-
tion for the story and says that " it
; afterward born anew as the son of
may refer to the sending out and es-
tablishing an oracle in the newly-dis-
covered West (Europe), through the
Phoenicians, the merchants and ex-
plorers of those days, who were in
alliance with Egypt, supplied it with
many of the productions it required
from other countries, and enabled it
to export .ts manufactures in their
ships."— A. W.
"' Plutarch Alexander.
: sided over the orgies, was deposed
'" Scholiast upon ApoUonius Kho-
dius, i. 636.
Julius Iiikmucius c. 14. Cle-
''''
: for an ashera, or oviphale (i Kings,
ment of Alexandria: Exhortatioin.
Arnobius: v.
Theintelligent reader perceives the
superficiality of the popular notion
that Bacchus or Dionysus was but
the god of wine and drunkenness, and
that the Orgies or secret religious
rites, were all occasions of revelling
and debauchery. His worshippers in
Thrace, the Orpheans, were ascetics
pears to be a foreigner, like Hercules.
As Zagreus, the son of Zeus by the
Virgin Kore-Persephoneia or Demeter,
Semele, he seems to illustrate the
metempsychosis. He was probably
identical with Baal-Peor, the Moabite
divinity, and the deity commemorated
by the Israelites in the " Baalim " or
priapic statues, often of wood, which
were set up with the " groves " or
symbols of Venus-Astarte, " on every
high hill and under every green tree."
Maachah, the queen-mother, who pre-
from regal rank by King Asa for mak-
ing a mephallitzcth, or phallic manikin,
XV. 13, and Herodotus, ii. 48). The
orgies, works, or nocturnal rites, con-
sisted of dances, mystical processions,
and searches after the mutilated body
of the divine youth.
See NoNNUs: iv. 273.
'^
He
brought to light the Evian rites
Of the Egyptian Bacchus, the orgies of
Osiris.
He taught the iuitiations at the Mysteries
Held at night and witli voice disguised,
;

and devotees, like the Gymnosophists He chanted to the Bacchante a Magian

of India. The Bacchus of ancient hymn,
worship was an Asiatic divinity, iden- Making a loud wail."
tical with Atys, Adonis, Osiris, and

109
50 TIte Symbolical Language of

75. The enthusiasm of the Greeks was, however, generally

of the gay and festive kind; which almost all their religious
rites tended to promote.'"" Music and wine always accom-
panied devotion, as tending to exhilarate men's minds, and as-
similate them with the Deity to imitate whom was to feast and
;

rejoice: to cultivate the elegant and useful arts; and thereby

to give and receive happiness.^" Such were most of the reli-
gions of antiquity, which were not, like the ^Egyptian and
Druidical, darkened by the gloom of a jealous hierarchy,
which was to be supported by inspiring terror rather than by
conciliating affection. Hence it was of old observed, that
" the Egyptian temples were filled with lamentations, and those of
the Greeks u,ith dances ; " '" the sacrifices of the former being
chiefly expiatory, as appears from the imprecations on the head
of the victim ^" and those of the latter almost always propitia-
;

tory or gratulatory.^" Wine, which was so much employed in

the sacred rites of the Greeks, was held in abomination by the
.(Egyptians, who gave way to none of those ecstatic raptures of
devotion which produced Bacchanalian frenzy and oracular
prophecy '°^ but which also produced Greek poetry, the pa-
;

rent of all that is sublime and elegant in the works of man.

The poetry of Delphi and Dodona does not seem, indeed, to
have merited this character but the sacerdotal bards of the
:

first ages appear to have been the polishers and methodisers ot

that language, whose copiousness, harmony, and flexibility af-
forded an adequate vehicle for the unpaiallelled effusions of
taste and genius, which followed.
76. Oracles had great influence over the public counsels
of the different states of Greece and Asia during a long time;
and as they were rarely consulted without a present, the most
celebrated of them acquired immense wealth. That of Delphi
was so rich, when plundered by the Phocians. that it snablea
These rites are mentioned in the ''" Herodotus : ii. 3g.
Bible under the designation of " The *" Expiatory sacrifices were occa-
Mourning for the Only-Begotten.'* sionally performed by individuals, but
They were celebrated in Egypt, Asia seem not to have formed any part of
Minor, and Greece. Olympias, the the establislied worship among the
mother of Alexander, like Maachah, Greeks hence we usually find them
;

was a priestess, or " sacred woman," mentioned with contempt,

and used to boast that the god was PLATO T/ie Republic, ii. 7. " Ped-
:

the father of her son. The funeral of ler-priests (agurlai), also prophets, fre-
Jacob Abel-mizraim (Cf/zfj-w 1.
at 11), quent the houses of the rich, profes-
appears to have been taken for this sing that they have a power from the
observance. —A. W. gods of expiating, by sacrifices and
^"* Euripides: Electra, 193. chantings, in the midst of hilarity and
'*' Strabo X. : feasting, whatever injustice has been
"'* Apuleius Genius of Socrates,
: committed by any one or his ances-
^gyptiaca numiiium fana plena plan- tors."
goribus, GrjEca plerumque choreis. '''"
PLUTARCH : Isis and Osiris, 6.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 51

them to support an army of twenty thousand mercenaries upon

double pay during nine years, besides supplying the great
sums employed in bribing the principal states of Greece to
support or permit their sacrilege.^"' Too great eagerness to
amass wealth was, however, the cause of their falling into dis-
credit it having been discovered that, on many occasions,
;

those were most favored who paid best "" and, in the time of
;

Philip, the Pythian priestess being observed to be as much

under the influence of Macedonian gold as any of his pensioned

JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY.

77. The Romans, whose religion, as well as language, was

a corruption of the Greek, though immediately derived from
the Etruscans, revived the ancient mode of divination by the
flights of birds, and the motions and appearances of animals
offered in sacrifice but though supported by a College of Au-
;

gurs, chosen from the most eminent and experienced men in

the Republic, it fell into disregard, as the steady light of human
science arose to show its fallacy. Another mode, however, of
exploring future events arose at the same time and, as it was ;

founded upon extreme refinement of false philosophy, it for a

long time triumphed over the common sense of mankind, even
during the most enlightened ages. This was judicial astrol-
ogy ^ a most abject species of practical superstition, arising out
of something extremely like theoretical atheism.
78. The great
active principle of the universe, though per-
sonified by the poets, and dressed out with all the variable at-
tributes of human nature, was supposed by the mystic theolo-
gists to act by the permanent laws of pre-established rule, and
not by the fluctuating impulses of anything analogous to the
human will the very exertion of which appeared to them to
;

imply a sort of mutability of intention, that could only arise

from new ideas or new sentiments, both equally incompatible
with a mind infinite in its powers of action and perception ;

for, to such a mind, those events which happened yesterday, and

those which are to happen during the immeasurable flux of
time, are equally present, and its will is necessarily that which
is, because all that is arose from its will. The act that gave ex-
istence, gave all the consequences and effects of existence;

'" DiODORUS SicuLus; xvi. 37. loving race." See also Herodotus:
'*'Sophocles Antigoni,
: io6. vi.
" The mantian office is of a money- °" Demosthenes : Philippics.
Ill
 ;

52 The Symbolical Langttage of

which are therefore equally dependent upon the First Cause,

and, how remote soever from it, still connected with it by a
regular and indissoluble chain of gradation so that the move- :

ments of the great luminaries ot heaven, and those of the small-

est reptiles that elude the sight, have some mutual relation to
each other, as being alike integral parts of one Great
Whole.
79. As the general movement of this Great Whole was sup-
posed to be derived from the first Divine Impulse, which it re-
ceived when constructed, so the particular movements of each
subordinate part were supposed to be derived from the first
impulse, which that particular part received, when put into
motion by some more principal one. Of course the actions
and fortunes of individual men were thought to depend upon
the first impulse, which each received upon entering the
world ; every subsequent event was produced by some
for, as
preceding one, all were really produced by the first. The mo-
ment therefore of every man's birth being supposed to deter-
mine every circumstance of his life, it was only necessary to
find out in what mode the celestial bodies, supposed to be the
primary wheels of the universal machine, operated at that mo-
ment, in order to discover all that would happen to him after-
ward.
80. The regularity of the risings and settings of the fixed
stars, though it announced the changes of the seasons and the
orderly variations of nature, could not be adapted to the ca-
pricious mutability of human actions, fortunes, and adven-
tures wherefore the astrologers had recourse to the planets
:

whose more complicated revolutions offered more varied and

more extended combinations. Their different returns to cer-
tain points of the Zodiac; their relative positions, and con-
junctions with each other; and the particular character and
"*
aspect of each, were supposed to influence the affairs of rren ;

whence daring impostors presumed to foretell, not only the

destinies of individuals, but also the rise and fall of empires,
and the fate of the world itself.""
81. This mode of prediction seems to have been originally

'*' The poet Dryden

believed in Ju- late Doctor Noah Stone of Guilford,
dicial Astrology and it is said com-
; Connecticut, who had learned the art
puted the horoscope of his son in in- from books written by Albubater, Ja-
fancy,which was actually accomplished, son Pratensis, and Paracelsus. Why
iSIr. William L. Stone, in tire Atlantic not accept the declaration of Hamlet
Monthly for February, 1871, gives " a to Horatio ? —A. W.
Chapter of Modern Astrology," in ^"^ Baillie Discours sur PAsirol-
:

which are recorded several remarkable ogie.

instances of successful divining, by the
112
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 55

Chaldsean, and to have been brought from Babylon by the

Greeks together with the little astronomy that they knew,"'
but the Chaldaeans continued to be the great practitioners of
it; and by exciting the hopes of aspiring individuals, or the
fears of jealous tyrants, contrived to make themselves of mis-
chievous importance in the Roman Empire;"" the principles of
their pretended science being sufficiently specious to obtain
credit, when every other of the kind had been exploded. The
Greeks do not seem ever to have paid much attention to it, nor,
indeed, to any mode of prediction after the decline of their
oracles:"' neither is it ever mentioned amongst the supersti-
tions of the ancient Egyptians, though their creed certainly
admitted the principle upon which it is founded."* It is said
to have been believed by only a certain sect among the Chal-
daeans "° the general system of whose religion seems to
;

have been the same as that of most other nations of the Nor-
thern Hemisphere; and to have taught the existence of an
universal pervading Spirit, whose subordinate emanations
diffused themselves through the world,"' and presented them-
selves in different places, ranks, and oflSces, to the adoration
of men who, by their mediation, were enabled to approach
;

the otherwise inaccessible light of the Supreme and Ineffable

First Cause."'

^"Herodotus: ii. log: "The sun- by Pompey, extended over the en-
it
dial, however, and the gnomon with tire Roman
empire. The Mithraic
the division of the day into twelve rites superseded the Mysteries of
parts, were received by the Greeks Bacchus, and became the foundation
from the Babylonians." of the Gnostic system, which for many
The Chaldaeans, or Magians, first a centuries prevailed in Asia, Egypt, and
conquering and civilising nation, ap- even the remote West. Julius Caesar
pear to have constituted the learned was assisted by a " Chaldaean " in re-
and probably the sacerdotal caste of forming the Calendar. A. W. —
Babylonia and the neighboring coun- '"''
See TACITUS : Ann. ii. c. 32, xii.
tries. The nameZoroaster, Zerdusht, c. 52, and Hist. i. c. 22 Genus homi- :

or Zerathustra, which is applied to num potentibus infidum, sperantibus

their traditional appears to
leader, fallax ; also Plin. lib. xxx. c. I.
have been a designation of the sacred "' Pindar: Olymp. xii. 10.
college, or of its president, as Zadok, '"' Herodotus : ii. 82.
or Zedek^ was of the head of the sacer- ^^ Strabo lib. xvi.
;

dotal family in Judea, and Rabbi, or "' Brucker: Hist. Crit. Philos.'i.
Rab Mag, of the chief of the college c. 2. Fons omnium spirituum, cujus
at Babylon. The Jewish Kabala, or essentiam per universum mundum tan-
traditions, appear to have been de- quam animam diffusam esse, etc. non —
rived from their religious opinions Chaldaea tantum et iEgyptus sed uni-
and legends, and were revived in versus fere gentilismus vetustissimus
Judea by the Casideans, or Asideans, credidit. See also EusEB. : Prcep,
better known afterward as Pharsi (Per- Evang. iv. c. 5.
sians or Pharisees). The peculiar ^" Brucker: Ibid. Summum uni-
form of this religion, known as versi regem
in luce inaccessibile habi-
Mithraism, was introduced into Pon- tare, nee adiri posse nisi mediantibus
tus by Artabazes, the satrap, from spiritibus mediatoribus, universi fere
which country, after its conquest Orientis dogma fuit.

"3
 ;

54 The Symbolical Langviage of

SEXUAL RITES AT THE TEMPLES.

82. Like the Greeks, they honored these subordinate

emanations, and gave them names expressing their different
offices and attributes; such as Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Ga-
briel, etc.; which the Jews having adopted during the captiv-
ity, and afterward engrafted upon the Mosaic system, they
have still retained their primitive sanctity. The generative or
creative attribute seems to have held the highest rank but it ;

was not adopted with the others by the Jews: for as the true
Creator had condescended to become their national and pecul-
iar God, they naturally abhorred all pretenders to his high
office.
83. At Babylon, as in other countries, the attribute was
divided into two distinct personifications, the one male, and
the other female, called Bel and Mylitta by the Assyrians and
Zeus and Aphrodite by the Greeks but as the latter people
:

subdivided their personified attributes and emanations much

more than any other, the titles of their deities cannot be supposed
to express the precise meaning of those of Assyria. Bel, or,
as the Greek write it, Belos, was certainly the same title, dif-
ferently pronounced, as the Baal of the Phoenicians, which
signified lord or master; and Mylitta seems to have been in all
respects the same as the Aphrodite or Venus of the Greeks
she having been honored with rites equally characteristic and
appropriate. The Babylonian women of every rank and condi-
tion held it to be an indispensable duty of religion to pro-
stitute themselves, once in their lives, in her temple, to any
stranger who came and offered money which, whether little ;

or much, was accepted, and applied to sacred purposes. Num-

bers of these devout ladies were always in waiting, and the
stranger had the liberty of choosing whichever he liked, as
they stood in rows in the temple no refusal being allowed.""
;

84. Asimilar custom prevailed in Cyprus, Armenia, and

'"' Herodotus: 199.
i.
The same custom existed in Ar-
menia, Phiygia, and in Palestine, as
well as in Carthage and Italy. It pre-
vailed also among the Israelites during
the monarchy, and was probably a
feature of the worship of Peor and
the Golden Calf of the Exodus. The
Hebrew prophets describe the idol-
worship by all the characteristics of
prostitution and the kadesliim and
; country. Josiah found them at the
kadeshuth, or men (semi-males) and
women devoted to temple-service, and
especially to minister to the pleasures
of the worshippers, were as common
in the Holy Land as among the na-
tions around. For such a character
a " sacred woman," or priestess, Judah
mistook his daughter-in-law, Tamar
(Genesis, xxxviii. 15) ; and in the reign
of King Rehoboam and his queen
Maachah, a priestess of the orgies,
they abounded in all parts of the
Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, as
well as at the " high places " and ;

114
 Ganymedes and Eagle.

.^•r-'^-''?-lr>''

Angel Raphael.
 Ancie7it Art and Mythology. 55

probably in many other countries it being, as Herodotus ob-

;

serves, the practice of all mankind, except the Greeks and

^Egyptians, to take such liberties with their temples, which, they
concluded, must be pleasing to the Deity, as birds and animals,
acting under the guidance of instinct, or by the immediate im-
pulse of Heaven, did the same.^°° The exceptions he might safely
have omitted, at least as far as relates to the Greeks for there :

were a thousand sacred prostitutes kept in each of the cele-

brated temples of Venus, at Eryx and Corinth who, according ;

to all accounts, were extremely expert and assiduous in attend-

;
ing to the duties of their profession '"' and it is not likely
that the temple, which they served, should be the only place
exempted from being the scene of them. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus claims the same exception in favor of the Ro-
mans, but, as we suspect, equally without reason for Juvenal, :

who lived only a century later, when the same religion and
nearly the same manners prevailed, seems to consider every
temple in Rome as a kind of licensed brothel.""
85. The temples of the Hindus in the Dekkan possessed their
establishments they had bands of consecrated dancing-girls,
;

called the Women of ihe Idol, selected in their infancy by the

priests for the beauty of their persons, and trained up with
every elegant accomplishment that could render them attrac-
tive, and assure success in the profession which they exercised;

at once for the pleasure and profit of the priesthood. They

were never allowed to desert the temple and the offspring of ;

their promiscuous embraces were, if males, consecrated to the

service of the Deity in the ceremonies of his worship; and, if
females, educated in the profession of their mothers."''

Hosea, referring to this peculiar form Nuper enim, ut repeto, fanum Isidis et
of Mylitta-worship, declared that
^
Samaria loved a rewardJ at^ every
1 •
J Pacis, 'ir,Tf
p,,,, et advectK
'^f
°'= ,
secreta w
palatia mains,
Et Cererem (nam quo non prostat femina
corn-floor. The prophets Jeremiah, templo ?),
Ezekiel, Hosea, and Micah are specific Notior Aufidio mcechus celebrare solebaa.
and unequivocal in asserting that the ''^^
MAURICE ; Antiq. Ind. vol. i.

lewd rites in Palestine were precisely pt. i, p. 341.

like those of the nations around them. See Asiatic Researches, vol. I. 166,
— A. W. and Inman's Ancient Faiths Em-
-™ Herodotus: ii. 64. braced in Ancient Names, vol. ii. p.
'"'
StrABO: viii. Diodorus Sicu- 168. An Arabian who travelled in pe-
LUS: iv. ninsular India, in the ninth century,
Thiswas the Phoenician Astarte, that mentions these women as follows:
as Venus Erycina was especially wor- " There are in India (in the Dekkan)
shipped by the Roman women, who public women called Devadasi, or vo-
every first of April made a phalle- tariesof the deity. When a woman
phoric procession to her temple. (See has made a vow for the purpose of
Ancient Symbol -Worship, p. 26.) having offspring, if she brings into the
*32 JuvEN.tL r Satire, 22. world a pretty daughter, she carries
the child to Bod {moie properly Maha
"9
56 The Symbolical Language of

THE NIGHT-GODDESS.

86. Night being the appropriate season for these observances,

and being also supposed to have some genial and nutritive
influence in itself,^" was personified, as the source of all things,
the female productive principle of the universe,'"' which the
jSlgyptians called by a name that signified Night. '°° Hesiod
says, that the nights belong to the blessed gods, as it is then
that dreams descend from Heaven to forewarn and instruct
men."' Hence night is called eiiphrone {good, or benevolent) hy
the ancient poets and to perform any unseemly act or gesture
;

in the face of night, as well as in the face of the sun, was

accounted a heinous offense.'" This may seem, indeed, a con-
tradiction to their practice but it must be remembered that a
:

free communication between the sexes was never reckoned

criminal by the ancients, unless when injurious to the peace
or pride of families and as to the foul and unnatural de-
;

baucheries imputed to the Bacchanalian societies suppressed by

the Romans, they were either mere calumnies, or abuses intro-
duced by private persons, and never countenanced by public
authority in any part of the world. Had the Christian soci-
ties sunk under the first storms of persecution, posterity might
have believed them guilty of similar crimes of which they ;

were equally accused by witnesses as numerous.""' We do, in-

deed, sometimes find indications of unnatural lusts in ancient
sculptures but they were undoubtedly the works of private
:

caprice or similar compositions would have been found upon

;

coins which they never are, except upon the Spintrise of Ti-
;

berius, which were merel)' tickets of admission to the scenes

of his private amusement.'''" Such preposterous appetites,
Devd), as they call the divinity whom Israelitish law prohibited the setting
they adore, and leaves her with him." apart of men and women to the libid-
This divinity is not now worshipped inous rites as was done elsewhere but ;

in that region but the custom was re-

; the practice existed in that country,
tained by the Brahman conquerors. See Deuterojwmy, xxiii. 17, and I
The women are called in the Tamul /ww^j-j, xiv. 24.
language Devadasi, which means '** Diodorus Siculus: i. 7.
women given lo God. The custom "* Orphic Hymn, ii. 2 :
" Night, the
existed with the Dravidians of India, genesis of all things, whom we also
but with no other race. It is precisely call Cypris " (Venus),
the same as that of maintaining almas *"* Jablonski : Egyptian Pantheon,
in the temples of Isis and A'rti/i'j'/iipM at i.chap.i.87. Ather, ov Athor ; Coptic,
the shrines of Astarte or Venus Ery- Athorb.
cina. '^''
Hesiod Works and Days, 730.
:

The vow of Hannah, who dedi- '" Hesiod Works and Days, li"].
:

cated her son, afterward the prophet '"' LiVY Histoiy of Rome, xxxix.
:

Samuel, to the service of the Temple, 9. Mosheim.

in pursuance of a vow, will be re- "° A writer in Old and New (Bos-
membered. He became a Nazir. The ton), for September, 1S74, endeavors
Bakchik Ecstasy.

^^.
 ;

Ancient Art ajtd Mythology. 57

though but too observable in all the later ages of Greece, appear
to have been wholly unknown to the simplicity of the early
times; they never being once noticed either in the Iliad, the:
Odyssey, or th? genuine poem of Hesiod; for as to the lines
in the former poem alluding to the rape of Ganymede, they
are manifestly spurious. °°'
87. The Greeks personified Night under the title oi Leto, or
Latona, and Baubb the one signifying oblivion and the other sleep,
;

or quietude ^°" both of which were meant to express the un-

;

moved tranquillity prevailing through the infinite variety of un-

known darkness, that preceded the Creation, or first emanation
of light. Hence she was said to have been the first wife of Ju-
piter,"" the mother of Apollo and Diana, or the Sun and Moon,
and the nurse of the Earth and the stars."* The.ZEgyptians dif-
fered a little from the Greeks, and supposed her to be the nurse
and grandmother of Horus and Bubastis, their Apollo and
Diana;"" in which they agreed more exactly with the ancient
naturalists, who held that heat was nourished by the humidity of
night."" Her symbol was the Mygali or Mus Araneus, anciently
supposed to be blind "" but she is usually represented, upon the
;

monuments of ancient art, under the form of a large and comely

woman, v/ith a vail upon her head.'" This vail, in painting,
was aiwaj 3 black and in gems, the artists generally avail
;

themselves cf a dark-colored vein in the stone to express it

it being the same as that which was usually thrown over the

symbol of the generative attribute, to signify the nutritive

power of Night, fostering the productive power of the pervad-
ing Spirit; whence Priapus is called, by the poets, hlack-
"°
cloakedj"^ The vail is often stellated, or marked with asterisks,

with great ingenuity to vindicate Ti- "* HERODOTUS, ii. 156.

berius from these imputations, and to ^^^ Macrobius ; Saturnalia^ i. 23.
show that he was remarkable for his " Omnium autem physicorum asser-
gentle and austere virtues. A. W. — tione constat calorem humore nutriri."
'"
=*' HoiiER : Iliad, V.
265, and xx. Plutarch : Symposiacs, iv. An-
230. TON. : Liberal. Fab. xxviii.
^'^ Plutarch: from Eusebius: '^'s
See medals of the Bretii, Sicilotas,
PrcEparatio Evangelic, iii. I. " Night King Pyrrhus, etc.
was Leto, from letho, to be oblivious, The animal symbol rarely occurs ;

as those in a dream." but upon a beautifully engraved gem,

Hesychius " Baubai, sleep bau-
: ; belonging to R. P. Knight, is the head
ban, to sleep." It is the same as of a Boar, the symbol of Mars the de-
Iatiei7t in a different dialect. stroyer, joined to the head of a Ram,
*" Homer : Odyssey, xi. 579, " Le- the symbol of Bacchus or Amun the
to, the illustrious spouse of Zeus." generator upon which reposes a Dog,
;

*'^ Hesychijs. The Jews have also the symbol of Mercury, or presiding
a tradition of Lilith, the firct wife of Mind and upon the back of the dog
;

Ad-im, by whom genii are produced is the Mygale, the symbol of Latona,

and children bewitched. or Night.

" Baubo, nurse of Demeter," ''' MoscHUS Epitaph. Bion.
: 27
Euripides: Electra. "Oh! sable yiEXay xI^<^t-v 01 rs TLpir^icoi.
Night, nurse of the golden stars." ^"^ See medals of Syracuse.
 — —

58 The Symbolical Language of

and is occasionally given to all tlie personiiications of the

generative attribute, whetiier male or female °°' and likewise ;

to portraits of persons consecrated, or represented in a sacred

or sacerdotal character, which, in such cases, it invariably s:g-
nifies.="

HORUS AND TYPHON.

88. The ^Egyptian Horus is said to have been the son of

Osiris and Isis, and to have been born while both his parents
were in the womb of their mother Rhea "' a fable which ;

means no more than that the active and passive powers of pro-
duction joined in the general concretion of substance, and
caused the separation or delivery of the elements from each
other for the name Apollo is evidently a title derived from a
:

Greek verb, signifying to deliver from ;^'"' and it is probable

that Horus, (or whatever was the Egyptian name of this
deity) had a similar meaning, it being manifestly intended to
signify a personified of action of Osiris ^°' in the same
mode ;

manner as Liber, the corresponding title in the Latin tongue,

signified a personified mode of action of the generator Bac-
chus.'" His statue at Coptos had the symbol of the generative
attribute in his hand, said to be taken from Typhon, the de-
stroying power "" and there are small statues of him now ex-
;

tant, holding the circle and cross, which seems to have been
the symbol meant. Typhon is said to have struck out and swal-

^o'
See heads of Venus on the gold
coins of Tarentum, silver of Corinth
of Bacchus on those of Lampsacus.etc.
^"^ See medals of Julius Caesar, Li-
via, the Queens of Syria and Egypt,
bust of Marcus Aurelius in the Town-
ley collection, etc.
303 Plutarch : Isis and
" Nature produces the universe [cos-
mos] by becoming herself of like form
and temper with the mental or interior
property. The generating of Apollo
are from the New-Platonic school,
and not from Ancient Egypt,
'"* Apoltto, anciently written with the
digamraa / or v, Apolufo. The en-
deavor to form an etymology for the
deity-names is not often satisfactory,
especially in the Greek language. Pla-
Osiris, ^4. to attempted it with remarkably ill suc-
cess.
Apollo, the sun-god, is the same as
Abel or Bel the younger, the Assyrian
and Phoenician divinity and doubt- ;

[Horus] by Isis and Osiris, while those less, may be identified both with Ho-
gods were yet in the womb of Rhea rus of Egypt and Chri^na of India.
hints to us that before this universe A. W
became visible {Hebrews xi. 3] and was 3°' Plutarch : Isis and Osiris.
completed by the higher Reason, mat- " He (Horus) is the terrcstr'al universe,
ter being convinced by Nature that she neither altogether delivering from cor-
by herself was incomplete, brought ruption nor generation."
forth the first production. This divin- 306 'j-j,g adjective liber is from the

itywas not the cosmos, but a kind of Greek luvo; the upsilon being changed
phantom or picture of the cosmos or to i and the digamma to b.
universe to be afterward." ""Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, ^S.
Plutarch's facts are well enough " In Coptos the statue of Horus has in
;

but his explanations and etymologies the left hand the aidoia of Typhon."
124
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 59

lowed one of his eyes "* whence the itinerant priests and
;

priestesses of the Egyptian religion, under the Roman em-

perors, always appeared with this deformity "° but the mean- ;

ing of this fable can not now be ascertained any more than
that of the single lock of hair, worn on the right side of the
head, both by Horus and his priests.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM ANCIENTLY KNOWN.

89. According to Manetho, the ^Egyptians called the load-

stone, the bone of Osiris : "" by which it would seem that he
represented the attractive principle which is by no means in-;

compatible with his character of separator and deliverer of the

elements; for this separation was supposed to be produced by
attraction. The Sun, according to the ancient system learnt
by Pythagoras from the Orphic and other mystic traditions,
being placed in the centre of the universe, with the planets
moving round,^" was by its attractive force, the cause of all
union and harmony in the whole, and by the emanation of its
beams, the cause of all motion and activity in its parts. This
system, so remote from all that is taught by common sense and
ODservation, but now so fully proved to be true, was taught se-
cretly by Pythagoras who was rather the founder of a reli-
;

gious order for the purposes of ambition, than of a philosoph-

ical sect for the extension of science. After a premature dis-
covery had caused the ruin of him and his society, Philolaus,
one of his disciples, published this part of his doctrines, and
Aristarchus of Samos, openly attempted to prove the truth of
^'^
it ;for which he was censured by Cleanthes, as being guilty

™' Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 55.

: nwise ; they affirm that Fire is at the
" They relate that Typhon one while centre,and that the earth and stars
smote the eye of Horus, and at an- move round that centre in a circle,
other while plucked it out and swal- thus making Day and Night."
lowed it, and afterward gave it back The author of the trifling book on
to the sun denoting by the blow
; the Tenets of the Philosophers, falsely
the monthly diminution of the moon, attributed to Plutarch, understands the
and by the blinding of him its eclipse central fire, round which the Earth
which the sun cures again by shininj and planets were supposed to move,
presently upon it as soon as it hath not to be the Sun in which he has
;

escaped from the shadow of the earth." been followed by Adam Smith and
309 Juvenal " Lusca sacerdos "
:
— others but Aristotle clearly under-
;

tht one-eyed priest. In Mr. Knight's stands it to be the Sun, or he could not
Collection was a bronze head of an suppose it to be the cause of day and
Agyrtes having this deformity. night neither could the Pythagoreans
;

Plutarch: /sis and Osiris, 62.

'^"*
" They call the siderite-stone the bone
of Horus, as Manetho asserts."
^" Aristotle: Concerning Heaven,
ii.13. " The Italian savans, called
have been so ignorant as to attribute
that cause to any other fire. This sys-
tem is alluded to in an Orphic Frag-
ment, and by Galen: Hist. Phil.
xiii.

the Pythagoreans, declare the contra- "''Dutens: Dilcouvertes Attributes

125
6o The Symbolical Language of

of impiet}' "° but speculative theories were never thought im-

;

pious by the Greeks, unless they tended to reveal the mystic

doctrines, or disprove the existence of a Deity. That of Aris-
tarchus could not have been of the latter class, and therefore
must have been of the former though his accuser could not
;

specify it without participating in the imputed criminality.

The crimes of Socrates and Diagoras appear to have been, as
before observed, of the same kind whence Aristophanes rep- ;

resents them attributing the order and variety of the universe

to circular motion called Z^Z/z^^y and then humorously intro-
duces Strepsiades mistaking this Dinos for a new god, who
had expelled Jupiter."* Among the symbols carried in the
mystic processions was a wheel "' which is also represented
;

on coins; ''" probably to signify the same meaning as was ex-

pressed by this word.
90. The great system to which it alluded was, however,
rather believed than known it having been derived from an-
;

cient tradition, and not discovered by study and observation.

It was therefore supported by no proof; nor had it any other
credit than what it derived from the mystic veneration paid to
a vague notion, in some degree connected with religion, but
still not sufficiently so to become an article of faith, even in

the lax and comprehensive creed of Polytheism. Common ob-

servation might have produced the idea of a central cause of
motion in the universe, and of a circular distribution of its
parts which might have led some more acute and discerning
;

minds to imagine a solar system, without their having been led

to it by any accurate or regular progress of discovery and ;

this we conceive to be a more easy and natural way of account-

ing for it, than supposing it to be a wreck or fragment of more
universal science that had once existed among some lost and
unknown people."'

THE ANCIENT TEMPLE-CIRCLES, AND FIRE-WORSHIP.

91. Of this central cause, and circular distribution, the

primitive temples, of which we almost everywhere find ves-
tiges, appear to have been emblems for they universally con- :

aux Modemes \ and authorities there ^" Ste'BKiiAAY.: Ifisluire de TAstro-

cited. nomie Ancienne. —Wilkinson is very
'" Plutarch : Concerning the Face explicit that Egyptians and
the
in the Orb of the Moon, vi. Chaldeans possessed the knowledge of
*'* Clouds, 826. the heliocentric system, and that they
'" Epiphanius. taught it to the savans of Greece. See
*" See medals of Phliasus, Cyrene, Herodotus ii. chap. 7 of Appendix.
:

Luceria, Vetulonia, etc. A. W.

126
Coins. Thunderboltj etc.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 6i

sist of circles of rude stones in the centre of which seems to

:

have been the symbol of the Deity. Such were the Pyraethea
of the Persians,"' the Celtic temples of the North, and the
most, ancient recorded of the Greeks; one of which, built by
Adrastus, a generation before the Trojan war, remained at
Sicyon in the time of Pausanias. It seems that most of the
places of worship known in the Homeric times were of this
kind; for though temples and even statues are mentioned in
Troy, the places of worship of the Greeks consisted generally
of an area and altar only."°
92. The Persians, who were the primitists, or Puritans of
Heathenism, thought it impious or foolish to employ any more
complicated structures in the service of the Deity "° whence ;

they destroyed, with unrelenting bigotry, the magnificent

temples of .iEgypt and Greece.'" Their places of worship were
circles of stones, in the centre of which they kindled the sacred
fire, the only symbol of their god for they abhorred statues,
:

as well as temples and altars;"" thinking it unworthy of the

majesty of the Deity to be represented by any definite form, or
to be circumscribed in any determinate space. The universe
was his temple, and the all-pervading element of fire his only
representative whence their most solemn act of devotion was,
;

kindling an immense fire on the top of a high mountain, and

offering up in it quantities of wine, honey, oil, and all kinds of
perfumes as Mithradates did with great expense and magni-
;

ficence, according to the rites of his Persian ancestors, when

about to engage in his second war with the Romans the event ;

of which was to make him lord of all, or of nothing."'

93. These offerings were made to the all-pervading Spirit 01
the Universe (which Herodotus calls by the name of Zeus or
Jupiter), and to his subordinate emanations, diffused through
Sun and Moon, and the terrestrial elements, fire, air, earth, and
water. They afterwards learned of the Syrians to worship

'"« Pausanias : vii. 22 and iv. times. At a later period they began
319 ..
Xsixevoi xat liooixoi." the worship of Urania which they bor-
32" Herodotus : i.131. "They (the rowed from the Arabians and Assyri-
Persians) have no images of the gods, ans. Mylitta is the name by which
no temples or altars, and consider the the Assyrians know this goddess, whom
use of them a sign of folly. Their the Arabians call Alitta (or Elissa), and
wont, however, is to ascend the sum- the Persians, Mitra."
mits of the loftiest mountains, and there In this account is no mention of the
to offer sacrifice to Zeus, which is the Ormazdean system, which all modem
name they give to the whole circuit of scholars consider as the ancient reli-
the firmamen t. They likewise offer to gion of Persia. A. \V.
'" HERODOTUS.
—
the Sun and Moon, to the Earth, to
Fire, to Water, and the Winds. These **' Strabo : xv.
are the only gods whose worship has '-' Appian : The War of Mithrada-
come down to them from ancient tes.

120
 —

62 The Symbolical Language of

their Astarte, or celestial Venus; and by degrees adopted

other superstitions from the Phoenicians and other neig-hbor-
ing nations who probably furnished them with the symbolical
;

figures observable in the ruins of Persepolis, and the devices

of their coins. We
must not, however, as Hyde and Anquetil
have done, confound the Persians of the First with those of the
Second dynasty, that succeeded the Parthians; nor place any
reliance upon the pretended Zend-Avesta, which the latter pro-
duced as the work of Zoroaster; but which is in reality noth-
ing more than the ritual of the modern Ghebers or Parsees.
That it should have imposed upon Mr. Gibbon, is astonishing;
as it is manifestly a compilation of no earlier date than the
eighth or ninth century of Christianity, and probably much
later.="
94. The Greeks seem originally to have performed their
upon high mountains;
acts of devotion to the sethereal Spirit
from which new titles, and consequently new personifications,
were derived; such as those of Olympian, Dodonasan, Idsean,
and Casian Jupiter.'" They were also long without statues "' ;

which were always considered, by the learned among them, as

s" Mr. Knight, as well as Sir Wil-
liam Jones, appears to us too skepti-
cal. The Avesta. is, to be sure, in
many respects, an incomplete work,
but it is obviously genuine. Despite
the foibles and blunders of Anquetil
du Perron and his teacher, the Destur
Darab, the labors of Burnous have
successfully vindicated him and the
Avesta, from the imputations made
against them. The discovery that the
Zend was one of the languages of the
cuneiform inscriptions, also helped
this confirmation. Sir Henry C.
Rawlinson turned this fact to excellent
account, translating a large portion of
talist, however, we think, will perceive
in Ahriman the Kissian or Susianian
divinity Harmannu ; and in Dahaka,
the ophite dynasty of Zohak the Ara-
bian that for a long period held Baby-
lonia, extending its sway to Media
and Armenia, and eastward to the
Indus, and perhaps by way of Cash-
mere and the Punjaub, under the mod-
ified name of Takshaka, to the coun-
tries beyond the Ganges. With this
explanation it will be seen that the war
of the Two Principles was a poetic
or mystical form of describing the con-
test of the Aryan and Hamitic (Turan-
ian ?) races the old Iranians, giving
;

the inscriptions by means of this lan-
guage. The dialect used in the Aves-
ta, however, is many centuries older
than that of the cuneiform writings.
We learn from the portions still in ex-
istence, somewhat of the schism that
took place between the two great
branches of the Aryan family, but not
whether the Brahmans or the Mazda-
yasnians, were the chief instruments
in the separation. We read also of
Ahriman, or rather Anra-Mainyas, as
the Potentate of Evil, and of the Ser-
pent or dragon-king Dahaka, as the
minister of his will but the clew is
;
not given, and we must ascertain it
elsewhere. The well-informed orien-
130
to the evil powers the names peculiar
to the religion of their adversaries, as
the Jewish Pharisees, copying from
them, made the Hittite god Seth or
Satan, and Baal Zebub of Ekron, their
ruler of the demon tribes.
In short, however, recently the
Avesta may have been compiled and
arranged, we think its genuineness
sustained. The English translation of
Prof. Spiegel's German Version, though
often difiicult to understand, will sat-
isfy most students, so far as it goes.
A. W.
^" Maximus Tyrius: Dissert, vii.
'" Pausanias: viii. c. xxii. and lib,
Poseidon.
 Ayicient Art and Mythology. 63

mere symbols, or the invention of human error to console

human weakness."" Noma, who was deeply skilled in mystic
lore, forbade the Romans to represent the gods under any
form either of men or beasts °"' and they adhered to his in- ;

structions during the first hundred and seventy years of the

Republic nor had the Germans, even in the age of Tacitus,
:
''^°

renounced their primitive prejudices, or adopted any of the

refinements of their neighbors on this subject.

SQUARE TEMPLE-ENCLOSURES, AND WORSHIP OF THE

FEMALE PRINCIPLE.

95. In some instances, the circular area above mentioned is

enclosed in a square one; and we are told that a square stone
was the primitive symbol of several deities, more especially of
the celestial Venus, or female productive power, both among
the ancient Greeks and ancient Arabians.'"" Upon most of
the very early Greek coins, too, we find an inverse or indented
square, sometimes divided into four, and sometimes into a
greater number of compartments; and latterly with merely the
symbol of the Deity forming the device, in the centre. Anti-
quaries have supposed this incuse to be merely the impression
of something put under the coin to make it receive the stroke
of the die more steadily:"" but in all that we have seen of this
kind, amounting to some hundreds, the coin has been driven
into the die, and not struck with it, and the incuse impression
been made either before or after the other, the edges of it being
always beaten in or out. Similar impressions also occur
on some of the little .^Egyptian amulets of paste, found in
^" SiOVHor'Ll.s: Aptid Justin Mar- ^™ Maximus Tyrius: xxxviii.
tyr. Co/wri. cd Gent. -p. 10. CLEMENT of Alexandria.
^'* Plutarch Nmna. : Pausanias :Achaica, xxii. 3.
"' Varro InAzigustindiCiv.DH,
:
" There stood next the statue square
iv. 6. While Mr. Knight denies the stones, thirty in number the Pharians
;

genuineness of the Avesta, he is ready worship them, calling each by the name
enough to accept the legendary his- of some divinity but more anciently,
;

tory of Rome. Yet it appears on its and afterward among the Greeks, white
face to be what learned writers have stones received honors as symbols of
asserted, a compilation or rather in- the gods."
The tales of
vention of later writers. Pausanias : ^toVa, xiv. 2. "The
Romulus and Rsemus, the Sabine statue of (Aphrodite) was four-square
women, and other such stories, are like the Hermaic pillars ; and the
probably no more valuable than the inscription declared the Aphrodite-
history of King Arthur. Numa, the Urania to be the most ancient of those
Pythagorean sovereign is evidently a called The Fates."
character borrowed from the Oriental *^'
Abbe Barthelemi : Memoiresdt
Vv'orld and the resemblance of his
; t Academic des Inscriptions, xxiv. 30.
name to Ntun or Kneph, the agatho- D'Ancarville Recherches sur Ut
:

dcemon of Egypt is probably some- Arts, Book I. iv.

thing more than an accident. A. W. —
133
64 The Symbolical Language of

mummies, which were never struck, or marlced with any ira

pression on the reverse.
96. In these square areas, upon different coins almost every
different symbol of the Deity is to be found whence, probably, :

the goddess, represented by this form, acquired the singular

titles of the Flace of the Gods'^'' and the Mundane House of Ho-
rns™ These titles are both Egyptian but the latter is signi- ;

fied very clearly upon Greek coins, by an asterisk placed in the

centre of an incuse square '" for the asterisk being composed of
;

obelisks, or rays diverging from a globe or common centre, was

the natural representation of the Sun; and precisely the same
as the radiated head of Apollo, except that, in the latter, the
globe or centre was humanised. Upon the ancient medals of
Corinth and Cnossus, the square is a little varied, by having
the angles drawn out and inverted ^" particularly upon those;

of the latter city, which show a progressive variation of this

form from a few simple lines, which, becoming more compli-
cated and inverted, produce at length the celebrated Laby-
rinth °" which Daedalus is said by the mythologists to have
built for Minos, as a prison to confine a monster begotten upon
his wife Pasiphae, by a bull, and therefore called the Mino-
taur. Pasiphae is said to have been the daughter of the Sun ;

and her name, signifying all-splendid, is evidently an ancient

epithet of that luminary. The bull is said to have been sent
by Neptune or Poseidon °" and the title which distinguished
;

the offspring is, in an ancient inscription, applied to At3's, the

Phrygian Bacchus "* whence the meaning of the whole alle-
:

gory distinctly appears; the Minotaur being only the ancient

symbol of the bull, partly humanised to whom Mir os may ;

have sacrificed his tributary slaves, or, more probtoly, em-

ployed them in the service of the Deity.""

"' SiMPLlcius : On Aristotle, HooV ^^^ Apollodorus : iii. i.

IV. " Wherefore the Egyptians call ^^" Gruter : vol. I. p. x.wiii. 6.
the Syrian A'argatis and Isis, 'The " Atlidi Minotauro" — to Atys, the
place of the gods,' as containing all Minotaur.
the divinities." Plutarch explains that ^^' Modern classical scholars are
Osiris was the beginning, Isis the re- disposed to make a distinction be-
ceptacle or intermediate, and Horus tween the Roman divinity, " Neptune
the ccmplement {Isis atid Osiris). or the Sea," and the eastern god
^" Plutarch. Isis and Osiris, 56. Poseidon: Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Sir.
" Isis is also Muth.and again they call Gladstone, and other eminent writers,
her Athyri and Methyer. They imply consider that although Poseidon was a
by the first of these names, the Mother, Deity connected with the Sea, he was
and by the second the mundane house not an actual Sea-God. We learn from
of Jlorus." Homer and Herodotus, that he was
'''*
See small brass or bronze coins the chief god in the pantheon of Libya
of Syracuse. and Africa, and accordingly was a
'^' See Hunterian
Museum. Hamitic rather than an Aryan divin-
*^* See Hunterian Museum. ity. He w.n.s also worshipped in Crete.
I.i4
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 65

THE BULL-SYMBOL.

97. In the centre of one of the more simple and primitive

labyrinths on the Grecian coins above cited, is the head of a
bull "° and in others of a more recent style, the more com-
;

plicated labyrinth is round."' On some of those of Camarina

in Sicily, the head of the god, more humanised than the Mino-
taur, yet still with the horns and features of the bull, is repre-
sented in the centre of an indented scroll, '" vifhich other
coins show to have been meant to represent the waters, by a
transverse section of waves."' On the coins, too, of Magnesia
upon the Meander, the figure of Apollo is represented as
leaning upon the tripod, and standing upon some crossed and
inverted square lines, similar to the primitive form of the laby-
rinth on the coins of Corinth above cited.'" These have been
supposed to signify the river Meander: but they more prob-
ably signify the waters in general; as we find similar crossed
and inverted lines upon coins struck in Sicily, both Greek and
Punic; "" and also upon rings and fibulae, which are frequently
adorned with symbolical devices, meant to serve as amulets or
charms. The bull, however, both in its natural form, and
humanised in various degrees, so as in some instances to leave
only the horns of the animal symbol, is perpetually employed
and may be identified with the Philis- Sidon. The building of the Laby-
tine Dagon, whom G. W. Cox consid- rinth indicative of a similar idea ;
is
ers to be the same as Cannes of Baby- Labyrinths, or winding caverns, gener-
lonia and Ana or Ana-melech of Sip- ally underground, weie constructed in
para. He is thus allied to the ancient India, Afghanistan, Susiana, Arabia,
worship of the East, as the representa- Egypt and other countries occupied
tive of wisdom and civilization ; the by the .Ethiopian race and it was ;

Building-God, father of the Cyclopean customary among them also to sacrifice

shepherds, who revolutionised the their children, selected victims, slaves,
countries which they occupied and captives, persons sent for the purpose
left behind them the stupendous from tributary provinces, and all
monuments of their greatness. strangers not entitled to protection.
Mr. Knight is probably right in de- The devouring of human victims by
daring the Minotaur to have been the the Cyclopes of Libya, the Seirens,
ancient symbol of the Bull, partly hu- Lamise and Lestrygones, as well as
manised that representation of the
; the Minotaur, was but a poetical figure
Supreme Being as the Sun in Taurus, to denote this custom. A. W. —
**" In the cabinet of R. P. Knight,
at the vernal equinox, being a general
symbol in all the countries on the ^" In the same. Also in the Brit-
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, ish Museum.
Pasiphae, the queen, is identical with '''*
Hunterian Museum, tab. 14, No.
Venus-Astarte. The sending of the ix.
bull by Poseidon only implied that the ^'" lb. tab. No.
56, iii.

Libyans or Phoenicians occupied the ^'" li. tab. No. ix.

35,
country; as is also signified by the trans- '" See a specimen of them on the
portation thither of the maid Europa, reverse of a small coin, Mus. Hunter.,
the mother of Minos and daughter of tab. 67, No. v,
Agenor or Belus, the tutelar god of
139
66 The Symbolical Language of

upon coins to signify particular rivers or streams; which be-

ing allderived from the Bacchus Hyes, as the Nile was from
Osiris, were all represented under the same form.'"
g8. It appears, therefore, that the asterisk, Bull, or Mino-
taur, in the centre of the square or labyrinth, equally mean the
same as the Indian lingam— that is, the male personification
of the productive attribute placed in the female, or heat acting
upon humidity. Sometimes the bull is placed between two
'"
dolphins,"' and sometimes upon a dolphin or other fish
;

and in other instances the goat or the ram occupy the same
situation;"" which are all different modes of expressing dif-
ferent modifications of the same meaning in symbolical or
mystical writing. The female personifications frequently oc-
cupy the same place in which case the male personification
:

is always upon the reverse of the coin, of which numerous in-

stances occur in those of Syracuse, Naples, Tarentum, and

other cities.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.

99. Ariadne, the fabled wife of Bacchus, is a personage

concerning whom there has been more confusion of history
and allegory than concerning almost any other. Neither she,
nor Bacchus, nor Theseus, appear to have been known to the
author of the Iliad ; the lines concerning them all three being
manifestly spurious but in the Odyssey, she is said to have
:

been the daughter of Minos, and to have been carried away

from Crete by Theseus to Athens, where she was killed by
—
Diana that is, died suddenly before he enjoyed her."" Such
"^s See coins
of Catania, Seliuus, 2'" Odyssey, xi. : "And I beheld
Gela, Sybaris, etc. Phsdra and Procris, and fair Ariad-
^" See brass coins of Syracuse. ne, the daughter of wise Minos, whom
*" Seen on a gold coin of Eretria Theseus once led from Crete to the
(Eubaea), owned by Mr. Knight, soil of sacred Athens but he did ;

Hence the address made by the Elian
women in their hymn to Dionysus,
preserved by Plutarch, Greek Ques-
lions, 36 : Dionysus."
" Come, Dionysus, with thy ox-foot,
come to thy pure temple by the sea,
and sacrifice with the Graces."
Then they chant twice the words
" Axii Tawri*," worthy is the Bull.
The superstitious notion of mod-
ern witchcraft, ihat the devil has a
not enjoy her, for Artemis (Diana)
slew her before-hand in the island
Dia, on account of the testimony of
As Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, was
identical with Venus Astarte and De-
meter (§ 96, note 339), so Ariadne, her
daughter, is to be regarded as another
form of Kore-Persephoneia. The in.
terpretation of the legend is as fol-
lows The Bull sent by Poseidon to
:

cloven foot, was evidently derived Crete, crossing over into Greece, and
from this conceit of the ox-foot of there caught by Hercules, implies that
Bacchus-Dionysus. the Sidonian influence in that island
"" See gold coins of Mgx and Cla- extended to the mainland, but suc-
zomenae, in Mr. Knight's collection. cumbed there to the milder cultus
140
 the Minotaur.
Theseus, Ariadne, and
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 67

appears to have been the plain sense of the passage, according

to its true and original reading but Theseus having become
:

a deified and symbolical personage, in a manner hereafter to

be explained, Ariadne became so likevtrise and was therefore ;

fabled to have been deserted by him in the island of Naxus

where Bacchus found and married her; in consequence of
which she became the female personification of the attribute
which he represented and, as such, constantly appears in the
;

symbolical monuments of art, with all the accessory and

characteristic emblems. Some pious heathen, too, made a
bungling alteration, and still more bungling interpolation, in
the passage of the Odyssey, to reconcile historical tradition
with religious mythology.
100. In many instances, the two personifications are united
in one; and Bacchus, who on other occasions is represented
as a bearded venerable figure,"' appears with limbs, features,
and character of a beautiful young woman ; "" sometimes dis-
tinguished by the sprouting horns of the bull,"' and sometimes
without any other distinction than the crown or garland of
vine or ivy.°" Such were the Phrygian Atys, and Syrian
Adonis whose history, like that of Bacchus, is disguised by
;

poetical and allegorical fable but who, as usually repre-

;

sented in monuments of ancient art, are androgynous person-

ifications of the same attribute,"" accompanied, in different
instances, by different accessory symbols. Considered as the
pervading and fertilising spirit of the waters, Bacchus differs
from Neptune in being a general emanation, instead of a local
division, of the productive power; and also in being a per-

represented by the Hero-God, Hercu- '^' See silver coins of Naxus, and
les. Theseus (Theos-Zeus) carrying Plates i6 and 39 of vol. vi. of Select
away Ariadne, and her destruction by Specimens.
Artemis, or Diana, expresses the fail- "* See Coins of Camarina (Sicily),
ure to supersede the bloody rites, etc.
Death by the hand of Diana can **^ See Hunterian Museum, gold
hardly signify perishing in maiden- coins of Lampsacus, and silver coins
hood for the Ephesian or Amazonian
; of Maronea.
goddess was not a virgin deity, but ^'''
See gold medals of Lampsacus,
was identical with the Great Mother, brass medals of Rhodes, and vol. i.
Cybele, Isis, or Anaitis, whose wor- pi. 39,of Select Specimens.
ship in Armenia and Pontus, like that '" Plutarch Symposiacs, v. 3.
:

of Mylitta and Venus-Aphrodite in
Assyria and Cyprus, was accompanied
by the defloration of marriageable
women.
The marriage of Ariadne to Bac-
chus is therefore perfectly in harmony
with the mystical sense, allying the tale
with the loves of Venus-Astarte and
Adonis, and the wanderings of Dido,
Isis, Ceres, and Cybele. — A. W.
I4S
" Both the gods (Poseidon and Diony-
sus) appear to be lords of the moist
or female, and of the male generating
principle."
Phurnutus : De NaturA Deorum,
iv. " Poseidon is the active principle
in the earth, and the potency of
moisture around the earth."
68 The Symbolical Language of

Eonificntion derived from a more refined and philosophical

system of religion, engrafted upon the old elementary wor-
which Neptune belonged."'
ship, to
is observed
101. It by Dionysius the geographer, that
Bacchus was worshipped with peculiar zeal and devotion by
some of the smaller British islands,"'
the ancient inhabitants of
where the women, crowned with ivy, celebrated his clamorous noctur-
nal rites upon the shores of the Northern Ocean, in the same manner
as the Thracians did upon the banks of the Apsinthus, or the Indians
upon thtse of the Ganges.'" In Stukeley's Itinerary is the
ground-plan of an ancient Celtic or Scandinavian temple,
found in Zealand, consisting of a circle of rude stones within
a square and it is probable that many others of these circles
:

were originally enclosed in square areas. Stonehenge is the

most important monument of this kind now extant; and from
a passage of Hecatasus, preserved by Diodorus Siculus, it
seems to have been not wholly unknown to that ancient his-
torian who might have collected some vague accounts of the
;

British islands from the Phoenician and Carthaginian mer-

chants, who traded there for tin. " The Hyperboreans," said he,
" inhabit
an island beyond Gaul, in which Apollo is worshipped in a
for
circular temple considerable and riches." This island
its size

can be no other than Britain in which we know of no traces

;

of any other circular temple, which could have appeared con-

siderable to a Greek or Phoenician of that age. That the ac-

Plutarch Ids and Osins, 35.

''^'
: the tutelar god of Libya, as Herodotus
'
The Greeks consider Dionysus not has shown he visited the .(Ethiopians,
;

solely as the god of wine, but also as and was worshipped at Philadelphia
the lord of every function of nature." and other inland places, as well as in
This assertion of Mr. Knight is de- the island of Crete and in Bceotia.
nied by later scholars. The Hon. Mr. Mr. Brown accordingly considers him
Gladstone declares of Poseidon that as identical with the Dagon of the
" Though God of the Sea he is not, so Philistines and Hoa or Cannes of Ba-
to speak, the Sea-God, or the Water- bylon, of whom H. C. Rawlinson re-
God. He
has in him nothing of an marks :
" Hoa occupies in the first
elemental Deity." The true sea-god Triad the position which in the Clas-
is Nereus. He is the building-god, sical Mythology is filled by Poseidon,
and stands in close relation to the and in some respects he corresponds
giants and other rebellious personages.
" In the western portion of the Outer
to him."
™
—
A. W.
Dionysius: i. 170.
Sphere, Zeus practically disappears Mr. Knight supposes these islands
from the governing office, and Posei- to have been the Hebrides or Orkneys,
don becomes the Supreme Ruler." *'* Diodorus Siculus ii.: 13 :

Hence Ulysses, in the Odyssey, comes " Hecataeus and others assert that
oftenest into collision with him and ; there is an island opposite the Celtic
Mr. Gladstone suggests that he was provinces not less in size than Sicily ;

" the god or the chief-god of the Phoi- that there was upon the island a mag-
nikes." (Juventus Mundi, ch. viii). nificent temenos (or enclosed circle) of
Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., going farther, Apollo, and a famous temple of a cir-
says " Poseidaon, sire of gods and
: cular form, abundantly adorned with
men," to the Hamitic East. He was 'votive offerings."
146
Marsyas and Olympos.

Eros and Satyr,

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 69

count should be imperfect and obscure is not surprising;

since even the most inquisitive and credulous travelers among
the Greeks could scarcely obtain sufficient information con-
cerning the British islands to satisfy them of their existence."'
A temple of the same form was situated upon Mount Zilmissus
in Thrace, and dedicated to the Sun under the title of Bacchus
Sabazius; "° and another is mentioned by Apollonius Rho-
dius, which was dedicated to Mars upon an island in the
Euxine Sea near the coast of the Amazons.""

PYRAMIDS, OBELISKS, AND CHURCH-SPIRES AS SUN-EMBLEMS.

102. The large obelisks of stone found in many parts of the

North, such as those at Rudstone and near Boroughbridge in
Yorkshire, belonged to the same religion obelisks, as Pliny :

observes, being sacred to the Sun whose rays they signified

;

both by their form and name."" They were therefore the em-
blems of light, the primary and essential emanations of the
Deity whence radiating the head, or surrounding it with a dia-
;

dem of small obelisks, was a mode of consecration or deification,

which flattery is often employed in portraits both of the Mace-
donian kings and Roman emperors.'" The mystagogues and
poets expressed the same meaning by the epithet Lukeios or
Lukaios J which is occasionally applied to almost every per-
sonification of the Deity, and more especially to Apollo who ;

"*
is likewise called Luklgenetes, or as contracted Lukigenes ;

which mythologists have explained by an absurd fable of his

having been born in Lycia whereas it signifies the Author or
;

Generator of Light ; being derived from Luki, otherwise Lukos,

of which the Latin word Lux is a contraction.

»'' Herodotus: iii. 115 :

" I do not Ancient Faith Embodied in Ancient
allow Ihat there is any river to which Names, i. 29, 609. A. W.
^" ApoLLONitJS Rhodius
—
the barbarians give the name of Eri- Argo- :

danus (probably the Vistula), emptying nautica, ii. n6o.

itself into the northern (IJaltic) sea, ^'^ Pliny: xxxvi. 14.
whence, as the tale goes, amber is Plutarch: Roman Questions, 2.
procured ; nor do I know of any " Light emblem of generation."
is the
islands called the Cassiterides (the See Pliny
^*' Panegyricz, Iii.
:

Tin Islands), whence the tin comes
which we use."
^^ Macrobius : Saturnalia, i. 18.
It is noticeable that lacchus-Saba-
zins is but a variant reading of the
Also Coins of Antiochus IV and VI.
of Syria, Philip IV. of Macedonia,
and of several of the Ptolemies, Oc-
tavius, etc.
'" Homer Iliad, iv. loi.
:

Hebrew or Phoenician designation, Mr. W. C. Bryant, not taking such a

Jaho-Tzabaoth, a name applied by
the Tyrians to the Sun-God in autumn,
and adopted apparently by King
David from them, as the title of the
Hebrew tutelar god. See INMAN
view, has rendered the term " Lycian."
But Jacob Bryant, from another
standing-point, derives these terms
from El-Uk, a title of the sun among
: the Egyptians and Babylonians the ;

149
 —

70 The Symbolical Language of

103. The titles Lucetius and Diespiter applied to Jupiter

are expressive of the same attribute the one signifying ;

lu??iinous, and the other Father of Day, which the Cretans

called by the name of the Supreme God."" In symbolical
writing the same meaning was signified by the appropriate
emblems in various countries whence Zeus Meilichios at Si-
;

cyon, and the Apollo Carinas at Megara in Attica, were repre-

sented by stones of the above-mentioned form °°° as was also ;

the Apollo Agyieus in various places; "" and both Apollo and
Diana by simple columns pointed at the top; or, as the sym-
bol began to be humanised, with the addition of a head, hands,
and feet."' On a Lapland drum the goddess Isa or Disa is
represented by a pyramid surmounted with the emblem so
°"
frequently observed in the hands of the Egyptian deities ;

and the pyramid has likewise been observed among the reli-
gious symbols of the savages of North America.^" The most
sacred idol, too, of the Hindus in the Great Temple of Jugger-
naut, in the province of Orissa, is a pyramidal stone ;°" and
the altar in the Temple of Mexico, upon which'human victims
were sacrificed to the Deity of the Sun, was a pointed pyramid,
on which the unhappy captive was extended on his back in
order to have his heart taken out by the priest."'
104. The spires and pinnacles, with which our old churches
are decorated, come from these ancient symbols and the ;

weathercocks, with which they are surmounted, though now

only employed to show the direction of the wind, were origin-
ally emblems of the Sun for the cock is the natural herald of
;

the day and therefore sacred to the fountain of light.'" In

;

the symbolical writing of the Chinese, the Sun is still repre-

initial vowel being finally elided. Aguieus: "The conical pillar by

A. W. the gates of buildings ; a priest of
^"
Macrobius Saturnalia, \. 15.
: Apollo, and the god himself."
Pausanius
»«» Corinth, ix. § 6.
;
^^^ Pausanias Laconia, xix. 2.
:

" Zeus Meilichios [Moloch] and Ar- " It had a face, feet, and hands the ;

temis also named Pairoa (the paternal, rest is like a brazen pillar ; upon the
perhaps as being an Amazonian, or head is a helmet, and in the hands, a
male-female), are made with no plastic lance and a bow."
skill; he is represented by a pyramid, *«'
Olaus Rudbeckius: Atlantica,
and she by a pillar." p. n ; v. 277, and xi. p. 261.
Attica, yXw.'^-i: "A
stone having "^ Lafitau: Matirs des Sauvages,
the form of a pyramid, not of large vol. i. pp. 146 and 148.
dimensions ; they call it Apollo Ka- 211 Hamilton: Travels in India.

I'inas." s« AcosTA History of the In-

:

^" SuiDAs: "Agyieus (the tutelar dies.

deity, or protector of highways) is rep- '" Pausanias: p. 444: "They de-
resented by a pillar running to a point, clare the cock to be sacred to the sun,
which is placed by the gates ; some say and the angel (herald) to announce
that they belong to Apollo, and others the Coming of the Sun."
to Dionysus, or to both alike."

150
Herakles and the Daughters of Eurj'tos.

Car of Juggernaut at StreeveUputoor.

 Ancient Art and Mythology. J\

sented by a cock in a circle "' and a modern Parsee would

;

suffer death, rather than be guilty of the crime of killing one."'

It appears on many ancient coins, with some symbol of the pas-
"° and in other instances
sive productive power on the reverse ;

it is united with Priapic and other emblems and devices, sig-

nifying different attributes combined.'"

THE GOOD AND EVIL PRINCIPLES.

105. The Egyptians, among whom the obelisk and pyramid

were most frequently employed, held that there were two op-
posite powers in the world perpetually acting against each
other the one generating and the other destroying
;
the for- ;

mer of whom they called Osiris, and the latter Typhon. By

the contention of these two, that mixture of good and evil, of
procreation and dissolution, which was thought to constitute
"'
the harmony of the world, was supposed to be produced ;

and the notion of such a necessary mixture, or reciprocal op-

eration, was, according to Plutarch, of unmemorable antiquity, de-
rivedfrom the earliest theologists and legislators, not only in traditions
and reports, but also in mysteries and sacred rites both Greek and
Barbarian™ Fire was held to be the efBcient principle of
both and, according to som e of the later yEgyptians, that sethe-
;

rial fire supposed to be concentrated in the Sun but Plutarch ;

controverts this opinion, and asserts that Typhon, the evil or

destroying power, was a terrestial or material fire, essentially
different from the sethereal; although he, as well as other Greek
writers, admits him to have been the brother of Osiris, equally
sprung from Kronos and Rhea, or Time and Matter."" In this,
'''' Du Halde: vol. II.: "They and philosophers, it having an original
(the Chinese) in representing the sun, fathered upon no one, but having
put a cock in a circle." gained a persuasion both strong and
*" Hyde Religion of the Ancient
: indelible, and being everywhere re-
Persians. ceived by both Barbarians and Greeks
^" See Coins of Himera, Same- — and that not only in popular dis-
thrace, Suessa, etc. course and public repute, but also in
^" See Coins of Selinus, Himera, their secret Mysteries and public sacri-
Samothrace, etc. fices— that the universe is neither
"* Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 45.
: hurried about by blind chance, with-
" The harmony of the universe is, ac- out intelligence, discourse, and direc-
cording to Herakleitos, like that of tion," etc.
a bow or a harp, alternately tightened HIPPOCRATES " This to come into
;

and relaxed, and according to Euripi- existence, to cohabit, to die, to dissolve

des (/Eolus): away, to be judged."
^'^ PLUTARCH Isis and
'Nor good nor bad here's to be found apart, : Osiris.
But both immixed in one, for greater art.' '' Also DiODORUS SicULUS. i.

^" Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 45.

: Wilkinson in Rawlinson's Hero-
" Therefore this most ancient opinion dolus, ii. 171, note 4, says " The
:

has been handed down from

the theo- sufferings and death of Osiris were the
logians and law-makers to the poets Great Mystery of the Egyptian relig-

153
 The Symbolical Language of

however, as in other instances, he was seduced, partly by his

own prejudices, and partly by the new system of the Jigyptian
Platonists according to which there was an original evil prin-
;

ciple in nature, co-existing with the good, and acting in perpet-

ual opposition to it.
io6. This opinion owes its origin to a false notion, which
we are apt to form, of good and evil, by considering them as
self-existing inherent properties, instead of relative modifica-
ion, and some
traces of it are percep- a Pharaoh the use of the bow, and
tible among
other people of antiquity. other weapons of destruction, which
His being the divine goodness, and were producers of evil. Sin, the giant
the abstract idea of 'good,' his Aph-ophis, as the great serpent,'
'

manifestation upon earth (like a often with a human head, being repre-
Hindu God), his death and resurrec- sented pierced by the spear of Horus,
tion, and his office as judge of the or of Atmoo [the hidden one the —
dead in a future state, look like the Tammuz of Ezekiel, viii. 16] as Re
early revelation of a future manifesta- the '
Sun ' recalls the war of the
tion of the deity converted into a gods and giants, and the fable of
mythological fable, and are not less Apollo (or the Sun) and Python, the
remarkable than the notion of the serpent slain by Vishnu. [The Greek
Egyptians mentioned by Plutarch (in name (Python) was probably Egyptian,
Life of Numa)^ that a woman might Pi-Tan, and may be traced to the
conceive by the approach of some di- Tan^ or Tanin^ of Hebrew, translated
vine spirit. As Osiris signified good,' '
serpent^ or dragon^ in Gen-and whale^
Typhon (or rather Seth) was ' evil,' esis, i. 21 ;
Ezekiel, xxvii.
Job, viii. 12 ;

and the remarkable notion of good 2 but which in Genesis might rather
;

and being brothers, is abundantly

evil
illustrated with early sculptures nor
was it till a change was made, appar-
ently by foreigners from Asia, who
held the doctrine of the Two Prin-
ciples [represented by Oromazd and
apply to the Saurian monsters in the
; early state of the world. It is singu-
lar that the Egyptians even believed
that it was inhabited by large mon-
sters. The Python evidently corre-
sponded to the giant Aph-ophis,' or '

Ahriman, Zoroaster, and ZohakJ that , Apap of Egypt, represented as the

evil became confounded with sin, '
great serpent,' who was sin, and was
when the brother of Osiris no longer pierced by the spear of Horus
received divine honors. Till then. (Apollo), and other gods. The last
Sin, the great serpent,' or Aphophis,
'
syllable of Satan (Shaytan) is not re-
'
the giant (or earth-born) was dis-
' lated to Tan^ as some might imagine,
tinct from Seth [or Satan] who was a the / being a teth, and not a tau in the
deity, and part of the divine system, Hebrew ; but Titan may be related to
which recalls these words of Isaiah it.
(xlv. 7) : ' I form the light and create " Osiris may be said rather to have
darkness ; I make peace and create presided over the judgment of the dead
evil I, the Lord, do all these things.'
; than to have judged them ; he gave ad-
And in Amos (iii. 6) : ' Shall there be mission to those who were found wor-
evil in a city, and the Lord hath not thy to the abode of happiness. He was
done it ? In like manner the my-
' not the avenging deity he did not pun- ;

thology of India admitted the Creator
and Destroyer as characters of the
Divine Being. Seth was even called
Eaal-Seth, and was the god of their
enemies also, which was from war
being an evil, as peace in the above
words is equivalent to good and in
ish nor could he show mercy, or subvert
the judgment pronounced. It was a
simple question of fact. Each man's
conscience was his own judge. Thoth
(or that part of the divine nature
called Intellect and Conscience)
; weighed and condemned and Horus ;

(Baal-) Zephon we may perhaps trace
the name of Typhon. [The izadia.nd
iau were interchangeable, as in Tzur,
or Tyre.] In the same sense, the
Ki^yptians represented Seth teaching
(who had been left on earth to follow
out the conquests of his father, Osiris,
after he had returned to heaven)
ushered in the just to the divine pres-
"
ence.'

154
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 73

tions dependent upon circumstances, causes, and events but :

though entertained by very learned and distinguished individ-

uals, it does not appear ever to have formed a part of the re-
ligious system of any people or established sect. The beautiful
allegory of the tvsro casks in the Iliad, makes Jupiter the dis-
tributor of both good and evil '" which Hesiod also deduces ;

from the same gods."^ The statue of Olympian Jupiter at

Megara, begun by Pheidias and Theocosmos, but never finished,
the work having been interrupted by the Peloponnesian war,
had the Seasons and Fates over his head, to show, as Pausanias
says, that the former were regulated by him, and the latter
obedient to his will."' In the citadel of Argos was preserved
an ancient statue of him in wood, said to have belonged to
king Priam, which had three eyes (as the Scandinavian deity
Thor sometimes had, "") to show the triple extent of his power
and providence over Heaven, Earth, and Hell "' and in the ;

Orphic Hymns or mystic invocations, he is addressed as the

giver of life and the destroyer.""
107. The third eye of this ancient statue was in the fore-
head and it seems that the Hindus have a symbolical figure
;

of the same kind "' whence we may venture to infer that the
:

Cyclopes, concerning whom there are so many inconsistent

fables, owed their fictitious being to some such enigmatical
compositions. According to the ancient Theogony attributed
to Hesiod, they were the sons of Heaven and Earth, and
brothers of Saturn or Time "° signifying, according to the ;

Scholiast, the circular or central powers, "° the principles of

^*' Homer : Iliad, xx. Bryanfs ^*° Orphic Hy/nn, Ixxii.

Translation. ^" Asiatic Researches, i. p. 248
" The gods ordain " This is Siva, or more anciently.
The lot of man to suffer, while themselves Maha Deva, originally the ante-Vedic
Are free from care. Beside Jove's thresh-
^ jj f j^e aboriginal Hindus."
old stand ^J, -,y B,,
•'™ HESIOD Theogony,
Twocasksof gifts for men; one cask con- : v. 139.
tains More literally the sons of Ouranos
Theevil, one the good and he to whom ^nd Gaia, and brothers of Kronos,
The Thunderer gwes them mmgled, some- t_- 1. i ^ j- -^ -
i_ j, ^
times falls which later divimty hardly appears to
Into misfortune, and is sometimes crowned be the same as Chronos, or Time, but
With blessings. But the man to whom he rather as Moloch the Fire-God.— A. W.
The^evi?only, stands a mark exposed ,
''^'^
Scholium on v. 139. "Cyclopes
To wrong, and chased by grim calamity, (Kuklopes), the powers of the circle,
Wanders the teeming earth, alike unloved or universe. Mr. Knight discards the
by gods and men, '
etc.
etymology of the scholiast.
*'-
Hesiod: Works and Days, bo. Modern research, we think, has
''^ Pausanias Attica, xi. : pretty accurately solved the nature
"' Olaus Rudeeckius Atlantica, : and character of the Cyclopean tribes,
part ii. v. p. 518. and assigned them to the same race
^'^ Pausanias Corinth, xxiv. § 5
: : as the Berbers and Phoenicians, of
" Zeus had two eyes, placed naturally, whom they were probably o£f-shoots.
and the third upon the forehead. They are described as inhabitants of
They say that Priam had this bust of Libya and Sicily, following a pastoral
Zeus from his ancestor, Laoraedon." life, worshipping Poseidon, and eating

157
 —

74 The Symbolical Language of

the general motion of the universe above noticed. The Cyclops

of the Odyssey is a totally different personage but as he is ;

said to be the son of Neptune or Poseidon, it is probable that he

equally sprang from some emblematical figure, or allegorical
tale. the poet meant him to be a giant of a one-eyed
Whether
race, or to have lost his other eye by accident, is uncertain but ;

the former is most probable, or he would have told what the

—
accident was. In an ancient piece of sculpture, however, found
in Sicily, the artist has supposed the latter, as have also some
learned modern writers.*'"

ANIMAL SYMBOLS.

io8. The .^Egyptians represented Typhon by the Hippopo-

tamus, the most fierce and savage animal known to them and ;

upon his back they put a hawk fighting with a serpent, to sig-
nify the direction of his power for the hawk was the emblem
;

of power, as the serpent was of life; whence it was employed

as the symbol of Osiris, as well as of Typhon."'
or more probably sacrificing, strangers
who fell into their power. They are,
again, depicted as a giant race, that
introduced a massive style of archi-
tecture into Asia Minor, Greece, and
Italy also as being the progenitors of
;
Galatus, lUyrius, and Keltus, or more
literally of the Gauls, lUyrians, and
Celtic tribes as workers in mines,
;
Among the
records, the identity of nations since
regarded as distinct and separate, ap-
pears to be an accepted opinion ; and
this may furnish an additional clew to
this problem. The shepherds of Egypt
are also denominated in the Chronicle,
Phoenicians, Hellenes or Greeks, Ara-
bians, and Strangers, or Xeni ; and it
is not improbable that they were pro-

and smiths who forged the weapons
with which Zeus destroyed /Esculapius.
The foundations of the First Temple
at Jerusalem, and the great dykes and
traces of fortifications at Arvad, in
Phoenicia, exactly correspond in cha-
racter with the Cyclopean structures
in Greece. There are also the re-
mains of similar buildings in Arabia,
Assyria, Persia, and even India. Eu-
ripides seems to have afforded us the
key, when he declares that the walls of
Mycenee were built by the Cyclopeans
after the Phoenician Canon and method.
Phoenician architecture is remarkable
for its massiveness and for partaking
of the specialities peculiar to the
stylesboth of Assyria and ^gypt.
The round Tower-pillars, like those
in the Temple of Melkavth-Hercules
at Tyre, ofSolomon at Jerusalem, of
Atargatis,the Syrian Goddess, at
Bambyke, or Hierapolis, and the re-
markable pillars in Ireland, are evi-
genitors or akin to the shepherd-colo-
nists of Libya and Sicily, as well as
many of the tribes of Greece and
Palestine. They occupied large dis-
tricts in Thrace, where the Bacchic
rites, as well as numerous sciences,
were cultivated, all of which are also
ascribed to Egyptian sources by He-
rodotus and others. We suspect,
therefore, that they owe their designa-
tion to their peculiar worship and
arts. They were ophites ; and the
syllable ops, which is the terminal of
so many ancient names, is the contrac-
tion of ophis, a serpent. The lemain-
der of their appellation is Kuklos, or
cycle, which may mean the universe.
Yet they do not transmit that designa-
tion to history, but are classed N\'ith
the Tyrian builders, the Libyans,
Italian tribes, and cognate populations
wherever they happened to dwell.
A. W.
*'''
IIOUKL Voyage en Sidle, plate
:

dently to be attributed to the same 137-

origin. We notice that in the ancient ^" Plutarch : his and Osiris, 50.

15S
 n^;<:>r;/^i«:?^^#es^;,v^

.
•'/>o
Europa.
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 75

Greeks it was sacred to Apollo ; but we do not recollect to

have seen it on any monuments of their art, though other birds
of prey, such as the eagle and cormorant, frequently occur.""
The eagle is sometimes represented fighting with a serpent,
and sometimes destroying a hare,"' which, being the most
prolific of all quadrupeds, was probably the emblem of fertil-
ity.'" In these compositions the eagle must have represented
the destroying attribute but when alone, it probably meant
:

the same as the .^Egyptian hawk whence it was the usual sym-
:

bol of the Supreme God, in whom the Greeks united the three
great attributes of creation, preservation, and destruction. The
ancient Scandinavians placed it upon the head of their god
Thor, as they did the bull upon his breast, °" to signify the
same union of attributes which we sometimes find in subor-
;

dinate personifications among the Greeks. On the ancient

Phoenician coins above cited, an eagle perches on the sceptre,
and the head of a bull projects from the chair of a sitting fig-
ure of Jupiter, similar in all respects to that on the coins of the
Macedonian kings supposed to be copied from the statue by
Pheidias at Olympia, the composition of which appears to be
of earlier date.
109. In the BacchcB oi Euripides, the Chorus invoke their
inspiring god to appear under the form of a bull, a many-headed
serpent, or a flaming lion ; °°° and we sometimes find the lion
among the accessory symbols of Bacchus; though it is most
commonly the emblem of Hercules or Apollo, it being the
natural representative of the destroying attribute. Hence it
is found upon the sepulchral monuments of almost all nations
both of Europe and Asia; even in the coldest regions, at a
vast distance from the countries in which the animal is capable
of existing in its wild state.'" Not only the tombs, but like-
wise the other sacred edifices and utensils of the Greeks and
Romans, Chinese and Tartars, are adorned with it and in ;

Thibet there is no religious structure without a lion's head at

" In Hermopolis, the symbol of Typhon etc. It was deemed aphrodisiac and
was a river horse upon which a hawlc double-sexed.
was placed, fighting with a serpent '"' OlAUS Rudbeckius : Atlantica,
representing by the horse, Typhon, part ii. v. pp. 300, 320, 386.
and by the hawk, power, and the ori- '" "Appear, in form, as a bull, as a
gin of things." " They also picture many-headed serp'snt, or as a lion in
Osiris as a hawlc." flaming fire."
^"^ Aristophanes : Birds, 314. The The invocation to the many-headed
cormorant is placed on the coins of serpent shows the probable Hindu ori-
Agrigentum, as the symbol of Hercu- gin of this divinity as the Hydra does
les ; the eagle is well-known as the of Hercules. A. W. —
bird of Jupiter. °" Histoire GMirale des Voyages,
8«3 See coins of Chalais and Euboea, vol. v. p. 458 ; also Embassy to Thibet,
of Elis, Agrigentum, Crete, etc. p. 262 ; and HoueTs Voyage en Sidle.
"*' See coins of Massena, Rhegium,

161
 :

76 The Symbolical Language of

every angle having bells pendent from the lower jaw, though
there is no contiguous country that can supply the living

model/"
no. Sometimes the lion is represented killing some other
symbolical animal, such as the bull, the horse, or the deer;
and these compositions occur not only upon the coins and
other sacred monuments of the Greeks and Phoenicians,'"
but upon those of the Persians,"" and the Tartar tribes of
Upper Asia "' in all of which they express different modifica-
;

tions of the ancient mystic dogma above mentioned concern-

ing the adverse efforts of the two great attributes of procreation
and destruction.

SYMBOL OF THE HORSE.

III. The horse was sacred to Neptune and the Rivers;*"'

and employed as a general symbol of the Waters, on account
of a supposed affinity, which we do not find that modern
naturalists have observed."' Hence came the composition, so
frequent on the Carthaginian coins, of the horse with the aste-
risk of the Sun, or the winged disk and hooded snakes, over
his back; *** and also the use made of him as an emblematical
device on the medals of many Greek cities."' In some in-
stances the body of the animal terminates in plumes *°° and ;

in others has only wings, so as to form the Pegasus, fabled by

the later Greek poets to have been ridden by Bellerophon,
but only known to the ancient theogonists as the bearer of
Aurora and of the thunder and lightning to Jupiter;"' an
allegory of which the meaning is obvious. The Centaur
appears to have been the same symbol partly humanised;
"» Embassy to Thibet, p. 288. ^^ Aristotle " The horse, an
:

'"See coins of Acanthus and

the animal fond of washing, and of water."
Velia, and also those of some un- See also note 422.
known city of Phoenicia. HouEL *>•*
See Hunterian Museum, the
Voyage en Sidle, pi. xxxv. and vi. coins being
*» Le Bruyn : RuiTis of Persefolis. '"^ Cyrene,
Syracuse, Maronea, Ery
*" On old brass coins in the cabinet thee in Boeotia, etc.
of Mr. R. Payne Knight. On a small *<" It is
so on coins of Lampsacus.
silver coin of Acanthus, in the same *" Hesiod : Theogony, v. 285. Ly-
cabinet ; where there was not room for COPHRON Alexander, 17.
:

the lion on the back of the bull, as in The history of Bellerophon is re-
the larger, the bull has the face of a lated in the Iliad, Book vi. but Homer
lion. _ says nothing of the horse. The later
"" Homer : xxi. Bryant's Transla- writers inform us that he was first
(ion : named HipponoOs, and Pindar relates
" This river cannot aid you ; this fair stream that he was aided by Athene to be-
With silver eddies, to whose deities come the possessor of Pegasus and
Ye oflter many beeves m sacrifice,
;
• .•. j • j „ „iTn- 4..^ Ua.-
And fling into its gulfs your firm-paced '" gratitude raised an altar to her
steeds." under the name Hippeia.
Virgil : Ceorgics, i. 12, and iii. 122
 A\_-

' I
1 1)

£^

*%,

« I

Marsyas and Olympos.

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 'j'j

whence the fable of these fictitious beings having been begot-

ten on a cloud appears to be an allegory of the same kind."'
In the ancient bronze engraved in plate Ixxv. of volume I. of
the Select Specimens, a figure of one is represented bearing the
Cornucopise between Hercules and ^sculapius, the powers of
destruction and preservation so that it here manifestly repre-
;

sents the generative or productive attribute. symbolical A

figure similar to that of the Centaur occurs among the hiero-
glyphical sculptures of the temple of Isis at Tentyra or Dende-
ra in .(Egypt "' and also one of 'the Pegasus or the winged
;

horse "° nor does the winged bull, the Cherub of the Hebrews,
:

appear to be any other than an .(Egyptian symbol, of which a

prototype is preserved in the ruins of Hermontis.*" The dis-
guised indications, too, of wings and horns on each side of
the conic or pyramidal cap of Osiris are evident traces of the
animal symbol of the winged bull.*"

LIKENESS OF THE CENTAURS AND SATYRS.

112. On
the very ancient coins found near the banks of the
Strymon and falsely attributed to the island of
in Thrace,
Lesbos, the equine symbol appears entirely humanised, except
the feet, which are terminated in the hoofs of a horse but on :

others, apparently of the same date and country, the Centaur

is represented in the same action namely, that of embracing
;

a large and comely woman. In a small bronze of very ancient

sculpture, the same Priapic personage appears, differing a

*"' E. Pococke, in his treatise, India
in Greece, makes the Centaurs, or Ken-
tauri, an Afghan tribe, and derives
their appellation from Candahar, a
city and district near the Indus. Bry-
ant remarks {Analysis of Ancient My-
ikology, iii. p. 315) that they "were re-
puted to be of Nephelim race (see
Genesis, vi. 4). Cheiron was said to
have been the son of the centaur Kro-
nos, but the rest were the offspring of
Ixion and Nepheld (Lycophron, v.
1200). They are described by Nonnus
as horned, and as inseparable compan-
ions of Dionysus. He supposes them
to have been the sons of Zeuth (or
Jupiter) and places them for the most
part in Cyprus." Ships were called
Centaurs, and hence Bryant infers that
they had a relation to the ark of Noah;
which being of " gopher wood," he
supposes was evidence for supposing
that they were built in Cyprus or
Cupher. Hislop in his " Two Baby-
Ions " refines upon this by rendering
NephelS (the cloud or female form
mistaken by Ixion for Juno), " a fallen
woman," from NePheL, to fall; and
makes the Centaurs the progeny of a
woman debauched after the manner of
the Cyprians and Assyrians, in the pe-
culiar rites of Mylitta and Astarte.
Nonnus, as Bryant observes, makes
them the offspring of Zeus in Cy-
prus. Dionysiaca, v., xiv., and xxxii.
" I came with great measure of ardent
passion for Paphia (Venus-Astarte) by
which embrace was engendered the
Centaurs, casting the spore into the
secret recesses of earth " (Gaia).
The mythical King Erichthonius is
said to have been the offspring of
AthenS and Hephaistos (Vulcan) in a
similar manner.
*"
—A. W.
Denon : pi. cxxvii. 2.
*'" Denon : pi. cxxxi. 3.
*" Denon: pi. cxxix. 2.
*" Select Specimens : i. pi. 2.

165
78 The Symbolical Language of

little in his composition he having the tail and ears, as well

;

as the feet of a horse, joined to a human body, together with a

goat's beard ; *'" and in the Dionysiacs of Nounus, we find such
figures described under the title of Satyrs which all other ;

writers speak of as a mixture of the goat and man. These, he

says, were of the race of the Centaurs with whom they made ;

*"
a part of the retinue of Bacchus in his Indian expedition ;

and they were probably the original Satyrs derived from

Saturn, who is fabled to have appeared under the form of a
;
horse in his addresses to Philyra the daughter of Oceanus ''"'
and who, having been the chief deity of the Carthaginians, is
probably the personage represented by that animal on their
coins.*'" That these equine Satyrs should have been intro-
duced among the attendants of Bacchus, either in poetry or
sculpture, is perfectly natural as they were personifications
;

of the generative or productive attribute equally with the

Faniskoi, of those of a caprine form wherefore we find three
;

of them on the handle of the very ancient Dionysiac patera,

terminating in his symbol of the Minotaur in the cabinet of
Mr. R. Payne Knight. In the sculptures, however, they are
invariably without horns. The Saturn of the Romans, and
probably of the Phoenicians, seems to have been the personifi-
cation of an attribute totally different from that of the Kronos
of the Greeks, and to have derived his Latin name from Sator,
the sower or planter ; which accords with the character of Pan,
Silenus, or Silvanus, with which that of Neptune, or humidity,
is combined. Hence, on the coins of Naxus in Sicily, we find
the figure usually called Silenus with the tail and ears of a
horse, sometimes priapic, and sometimes with the priapic term
of the Pelasgian Mercury as an adjunct, and always with the
head of Bacchus on the reverse. Hence the equine and caprine
Satyrs, Fauns, and Paniski, seem to have had nearly the
same meaning, and to have respectively differed in different

"' D'Ancarville :Recherckes sur ""s

These are probably the person-
les Arts de la Grdce : i. pi. 13. There ages represented on the Thracian or
is no inaccuracy the terminal word
; Macedonian coins above cited but ;

taurus having misled the author into the Saturn of both seems to have an-
supposing that the animal parts were swered rather to the Poseidon of the
those of a bull. Greeks, than to the personification of
•"•'
Dionysiacs : xiii. and xiv. See Time, commonly called Kronos or
note 40S. Saturn. The represented
figure
*'" Virgil : Georgics, iii. 92. " Such mounted upon a winged horse termin-
Saturn (Kronos) too, himself, swift at ating in a fish, and riding upon the
the coming of his wife, spread out a waters, with a bow in his hand, is prob-
full mane upon his equine neck, and ably the same personage. See Mi-
flying filled Pelion with shrill whinney- dailies Phiniciennes du Dutens, pi. i. f.
ing." The etymology proposed is i. The coin is better preserved in the
fanciful. cabinet of Mr. Knight.
166
Kentaurs and Kentauresses.'
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 79

stages and styles of allegorical composition only by having

more or less of the animal symbol mixed with the human
forms, as the taurine figures of Bacchus and the Rivers have
more or less or the original bull. Where rhe legs and horns
of the goat are retained, they are usually called Satyrs and ;

where only the ears and tail, Fauns and, as this distinction ;

appears to have been observed by the best Latin writers, we

see no reason to depart from it, or to suppose, with some
modern antiquaries, that Lucretius and Horace did not apply
properly the terms of their own language to the symbols
of their own religion/" The baldness always imputed to Sile-
nus is perhaps best explained by the quotation in the mar-
gin."'

HIPPA, THE ANCIENT GODDESS.

113. In the Orphic Hymns \he. goddess Hippa is celebrated as

the nurse of the generator Bacchus, and the soul of the world;*"
and in the cave-temple of Phigale in Arcadia, the daughter
of Ceres by Neptune was represented with the head of a
horse, having serpents and other animals upon it, and holding
upon one hand a dolphin, and upon the other a dove;"° the
meaning of which symbols, Pausanias observes, were evident
of every instructed and initiated man though he does not ;

"'
choose to relate it, any more than the name of this goddess ;

*" Bassi-reliezri di Roma, ii. page pun on that of the deities. The deities
I4Q, note 14. of that worship that were not Grecian
^'* Hippocrates :" They who are originally were called Hippian, and
bald {phalakids) are of an inflamma- their priests Hippai, as in the case of
tory habit ; and the plasma (phlegm) Diomedes.=-^A. W.
in their head being agitated and heated
''*''
Pausanias
Arcadia, xliii. 2, 3.
:

by salacity, coming to the epidermis The Phygalians say that the offspring
withers the roots of the hair causing it of Demeter (by Poseidon) was not a
to fall off, for which reason castrated mare (Jiippos), but the Despoina (lady,
men are never bald." mistress, tutelar goddess) whom the
The Zeus Phalakiis of the Argives, Arcadians call Hippia
mentioned by Clement (Exhortations, " This cave is regarded as the temple
ii.), is supposed to have acquired that of Demeter, and in it is an image
designation from the same idea. {agalma), made of wood this image ;

"" .ffj/OTB. xlviii. " Calling Hippa, was made by them in this style it was ;

the nurse of Bacchus." seated on a stone, and was like a wo-

Fragment, xliii. (from Proclus). man, except the head but it had the ;

" Hippa, the suul of everything." head and mane of a mare, and the like-
Hippa is from the Phoenician Hip, nesses of serpents and other animals
and signifies the Parent of all. Hesy- grew to the head a chemise {chiton)
;

chius renders .ffi^/o» as follows; "Hip- covered her to the extremities of the
—
pon the sexual parts of a woman or feet there was a dolphin upon one
;

of a man; a large fish." The deity hand and a bird on the other."
Hippa was therefore " parent of gods *" Pausanias Arcadia, xxxvii. 6
:

and men," and represented by phallic " The name of the tutelar goddess it
symbols. The horse or hippos was was feared to write for those who had
sacred because the Greek name is a not been initiated."

8o The Symbolical Language of
they being both probably mystic. The title Hippios or Hippia
was applied to several deities "^ and occasionly even to living
;
sovereigns, whom flattery had decked out with divine attri-
butes as appears in the instance of Arsinoe the wife of
;
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was honored with it."" One of
the most solemn forms of adjuration in use among the ancient
inhabitants of Sweden and Norway was by the shoulder of
the horse "" and when Tyndarus engaged the suitors of Helen
;
to defend and avenge her, he is said to have made them swear
upon the testicles of the same animal."'
*" Pausanias says (Attica, xxxi. 4),
that near the Academy in Athens was
a mound {bonius) sacred to Poseidon as
Hippios and to Pallas- Athena as Hip-
pia. He also says, " There is a mound
by that of Athena sacred to Hygeia,
and they call Athena by the name
Hippia, and Dionysus by that of Mel-
pomenos, and also Kissos." This lat-
ter term probably denotes the Kisssean
origin of the Bacchic worship, and is
commemorated in oriental fashion by
the pun of Kissos or Ivy. sacred to
that divinity.
Pausanias also declares Elia. I.,—
XV. 4 : " The mounds to Poseidon as
Hippios, and Hera as Hippia ; . . .
the mounds to Arei (Mars) as Hippios,
and to Athena as Hippia."
It might be conjectured with great
plausibility, that the horse and mare
were placed for the divinities whom
they represented. In the Hindu My-
thology each deity has a vehan or ve-
hicle, generally a bird or animal, that
is generally depicted with them, in
that manner. But Jacob Bryant {An-
alysis of Ancient Mythology iii.) de- , taxed the powers of the euhemerists.
clares Hippos and Hippa, Hippios and
Hippia were designations brought from
an older language Hippa, he re-
; or Poseidon, had the same mystical
marks, being the same as Cybel^, the
Mother-goddess, worshipped in Lydia
and Phrygia. She was the nurse of
Dionysus after the death of his mother
Semele, and his birth from the thigh
of his father. Homer speaks of the
mares reared by Phoebus in Pieria : the Phoenicians or Philistines, being
" That guided by Eumelus, flew like birds,"
them
and Callimachus also refers to
in his Hymn to Apollo. " Those
Hippai, misconstrued Bry-
mares,"
ant declares, " were priestesses of
the godd;-,s Hippa, who was of old
worshipptJ in Thessaly and Thrace,
and in many different regions. They
170
—
chanted hymns in her temples and
performed the rites of fire; but the wor-
ship growing obsolete, the very terms
were at last mistaken. How far this
worship once prevailed may be known
from the many places denominated
from Hippa." "The rites of Dionysus
Hippius were carried into Thrace
where the horses of Diomedes were
said to have been fed with human
flesh. Those horses, xenoktonoi, which
fed upon the flesh of strangers, were
the priests of Hippa, and of Dionusus,
styled Hippos, or more properly Hip-
pios."
Mr. Bryant explains elsewhere the
cannibalism of the Lasstrygones and
Cyclopes, and the slaughtering of men
allured by the Sirens, by the same hy-
pothesis of human sacrifices. The
horse Pegasus, said to have been the
son of Poseidon and Medusa, bom
from her neck after her head had been
cut off by Perseus, is interpreted by
Palrephatus as a ship and the steed ;
Arei6n, the offspring of Poseidon and
Demeter-Erinnys, has in like manner
Mr. Bryant also supposes that the Great
Fish Ceto which was sacred to Dagon
meaning as the horse and ship.
It would curiously affect our literal
interpreters of the Hebrew Scripture
to learn that the swallowing of Jonah
by the Great Fish was a figurative de-
scription of his rescue by a ship of
the effigy of Dagon or Ceto ; and yet it
is neither irrational nor incredible.
A. W.
"^2 Hesychius Hippia.
:
*'''
Mallet : Introduction a la His-
toire de Danemarc.
*" Pausanias iii. ch. xx.
:
Kentaur and Eros.
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 8i

MEANING OF VARIOUS SYMBOLICAL REPRESENTATIONS

114. In an ancient piece of marble sculpture in relief, Jupi-

ter is represented reposing upon the back of a Centaur, who
carries a deer in his hand by which singular composition is
;

signified, not Jupiter, going to hunt, as antiquaries have

supposed,"" but the all-pervading Spirit, or supreme male
principle incumbent upon the waters, and producing fertility,
or whatever property or modification of properties the deer
was meant to signify. Diana, of whom it was a symbol, was
in the original planetary and elementary worship, the Moon ;

but in the mystic religion, she appears to have been a personi-

fication of the all-pervading Spirit, acting through the moon
upon the Earth and the waters. Hence she comprehended
almost every other female personification, and has innumera-
ble titles and symbols expressive of almost every attribute,
whether of creation, preservation, or destruction as appears ;

from the Pantheic figures of her such as she was worshipped ;

in the celebrated temple of Ephesus, of which many are ex-

tant. Among the principal of these symbols is the deer,
which also appears among the accessory symbols of Bacchus :

and which is sometimes blended into one figure with the goat
so as to form a composite fictitious animal called a Trag-ele-
phus of which there are several examples now extant."' The
;

very ancient colossal statue of the androgynous Apollo near

Miletus, of which there is an engraving from an ancient copy
in the Select Specimens, pi. xii. carried a deer in the right hand,
and on a very early gold coin, probably of Ephesus, a male
beardless head represented with the horns of the same ani-
is

mal "" whence we suspect that the metamorphoses of Actaeon,.

;

like many other similar fables, arose from some such symboli-
cal composition.

SYMBOLISM AND ALLEGORIES.

115. It is probable therefore that the lion devouring the

horse, represents the diurnal heat of the Sun exhaling the
42« WiNCKELMAN Monument, Antic,
; carried away during the troubles by
inedited, No. ii. which Ptolemy XI. was expelled, a
^'" DiODORUS SicuLUS : xxviii. 20. glass one was substituted and exhibited
" EfiSgies of goat-elephants were among in its place in the time of Strabo." See
the ornaments of the magnificent Geogr. xvii.
hearse in which the body of Alexander 'i'*
Mr. R. Payne
In the cabinet of
the Great was conveyed from Babylon Knight.
to Alexandria, where it was deposited See Ionian Antiquities published by
in a shrine or coffin of solid gold the Society Dilettanti, vol. L c. iii. pL
which having been melted down and ix.

173
 : ;

82 The Symbolical Language of

waters and devouring the deer, the same heat withering and
;

putrefying the productions of the earth both of which, though ;

immediately destructive, are preparatory to reproduction for :

the same fervent rays, which scorch and wither, clothe the
earth with verdure, and mature all its fruits. As they dry up
the waters in one season, so they return them in another,
causing fermentation and putrefaction, which make one
generation of plants and animals the means of producing an-
other in regular and unceasing progression, and thus consti-
tute that varied yet uniform harmony in the succession of
causes and effects, which is the principle of general order and
economy in the operations of nature. The same meaning was
signified by a composition more celebrated in poetry, though
less frequent in art, of Hercules destroying a Centaur; who is
sometimes distinguished, as in the ancient coins above cited,
by the pointed goat's beard.
1 1 6. This universal harmony is represented, on the frieze
of the temple of Apollo Didumaeus near Miletus, by the lyre
supported by tvjo symbolical figures composed of the mixed
forms and features of the goat and the lion, each of which
rests one of its fore-feet upon it.*" The poets expressed the
same meaning in their allegorical tales of the loves of Mars
and Venus from which sprang the goddess Harmonia,"" re-
;

presented by the lyre,"' which, according to the .Egyptians

was strung by Mercury with the sinews of Typhon.*"

"the mother and daughter" ISIS AND PROSERPINA.

117. The fable of Ceres and Proserpina is the same allegory

inverted: for Proserpina or Persephoneia, who, as her name
indicates, was the goddess of Destruction, is fabled to have
sprung from Jupiter and Ceres, the most general personifica-
tions of the creative powers. Hence she is called Kore the

*'' " This was the harp which Zeus's beaute-

See Ionian Antiquities published
by the Society Dilettanti, vol. i. c. iii. „ o^is son
^1 ;„ Framed by celestial skill to play upon
l^ '.,„ T , ^ ^^^ for l"s plectrum the sun s beams he
430 Plutarch : Ins and Osms, used,
40. To strike those chords that mortal ears
Sophocles (Edifus Tyr., v. 190.
:
amused."
This unarmed Mars is the plague: *''^
Plutarch : Isisand Osiris, ss-
wherefore that god must have been "They fable that Hermes (Thoth or
considered as the Destroyer in general, Mercury) took out the sinews of Ty •

not as the god of War in particular. phon and used them for harp-strings,
^^^ Tlvtarch I'ytAian Priestess,
: 16. to denote that when JVous or reason
" They presented a golden plectrum arranged the universe it made a con-
to Apollo, remembering perhaps those cord out of many discords, and so did
verses of Scythinus, who thus wrote of not abolish, but merely curtailed the
the harp scope of the corruptible principle."
174
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 83

daughter "' as being the universal daughter, or general sec-

;

ondary principle ; for though properly the goddess of Destruc-

tion, is frequently distinguished by the title Soteira"*
she
Preserver, and represented with ears of corn upon her head, as
goddess of Fertility. She was, in reality, the personification
of the heat or fire supposed to pervade the earth, which was
held to be at once the cause and eflFect of fertility and destruc-
tion, as being at once the cause and effect of fermentation,
from which both proceed."* The mystic concealment of her
operation was expressed by the black vail or bandage upon
her head,"" which was sometimes dotted with asterisks
whilst the hair, which it enveloped, was made to imitate
flames."'
The Nephthe or Nephthus of the Egyptians, and the
118.
Libitina, or goddess of Death of the Romans, were the same
personage and yet, with both these peoples, she was the same
:

as Venus and Libera, the goddess of generation."' Isis was also

the same, except thatby the later .^Egyptians, the personification
was more generalised, so as to comprehend universal
still
nature whence Apuleius invokes her by the names of Eleu-
;

sinian Ceres, Celestial Venus, and Proserpina and she an- ;

swers him by a general explanation of these titles. " I am,"

says she, " Nature, the parent of things, the sovereign of the
elements, the primary progeny of time, the most exalted of
the deities, the first of the heavenly gods and goddesses, the
queen of the shades, the uniform countenance who dispose ;

with my nod the luminous heights of heaven, the salubrious

breezes of the sea, and the mournful silence of the dead ;

whose single deity the whole world venerates in many

forms, with various rites, and many names. The Egyptians,
skilled in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies,
and call me by my true name. Queen Isis." "°
433 j^i^yi ig also translated puella or Isis and Osiris : " Nephthe, whom
maiden, and yet she is reputed to have some likewise call Death and Aphro-
been the mother of Diouysus-Zagreus dit^ they also name Victory."
of the Sabazian mysteries. But in Cicero: Against Verres. "They
truth the name is the same as Kura, call her Libera, who is the same as
the feminine designation of the Sun, Proserpina."
and the title given to Ceres or De- ^'' Apuleius : The Golden Ass.
meter at Cnidus. Indeed, the two, " En adsum tuis commota, Luci, pre-
Demeter and Kore-Persephoneia, her cibus, rerura natura parens, elemen-

"^ See coins of Agathocles.

—
reputed daughter, are identical. A. W.
'y- Orphic Hymn, y^Yx.-. " Persepho-
neia, alike the cause of life and death
torium omnium domina, sasculorum
progenies initialis, summa numinum,
regina manium, prima ccelitum, deo-<
rum dearumque, facies uniformis :

to mortals." quse coeli luminosa culmina, maris sal-

"' Meleager Epigram, cxix.
: ubria flamina, inferorum deplorata si-
"' See silver coins of Syracuse, etc. lentia nutibus meis dispenso, cujus
438 Plutarch Numa. : numen unicum, multiformi specie, ritu
17s
 ; ;

84 The Symbolical Language of

This universal character of the goddess appears, how-

119.
ever, tohave been subsequent to the Macedonian conquest
when a new modification of the ancient systems of religion and
philosophy took place at Alexandria, and spread itself gradu-
ally over the world. The statues of this Isis are of a composi-
tion and form quite different from those of the ancient
Egyptian goddess and all that we have seen are of Greek or
;

Roman sculpture. The original .Egyptian figure of Isis is

merely the animal symbol of the cow humanised, with the
addition of the serpent, disk, or some other accessary emblem :

but the Greek and Roman figures of her are infinitely varied
to signify by various symbols the various attributes of uni-
versal Nature."" In this character she is confounded with the
personifications of Fortune and Victory, which are in reality
no other than those of Providence, and therefore occasionally
decked with all the attributes of universal Power.*" The
figures of victory have frequently the antenna or sail-yard of
a ship in one hand, and the chaplet or crown of immortality
in the other *" and those of Fortune, the rudder of a ship in
;

one hand, and the cornucopise in the other, with the modius
or polos on her head "' which ornaments Bupalus of Chios
;

is said to have first given her in a statue made for the

Smyrnasans about the sixtieth Olympiad *" but both have ;

occasionally Isiac and other symbols."'

ISIS-WORSHIP THE SAME AS THE ASIATIC RELIGIONS.

120. The allegorical tales of the loves and misfortunes of

Isis and Osiris are an exact counterpart of those of Venus and
vario, nomine multijugo totus venera- " See medals in gold of Alexander
tur orbis. Prisca doctrina pol- the Great.
lentes ^gyptii, ceremoniis me prorsus ***
Bronzi cCErcolano, vol. 2, xxviii.
propriis percolentes, appellant vero Pausanias Messen. xxx. 3, 4
*** :

nomine Reginam Isidem." " The first mention of which I know,

"" See plate Ixx. of vol. I. The that is made of TycliS or Fortune,
Egyptian figures with the horns of the Homer makes in his
to "Hymn
cow, wrought under the Roman em- Demeter" (line 417). "She is men-
pire, are common in all collections of tioned also as the daughter of Ocean-
small bronzes. us." . . . . " Nothing further is
*" Pausanias Achates, xxvi. 3.
: declared than that this goddess is
" I am persuaded that in this ode of greatest among
the gods in the affairs
Pindar, Fortune may be regarded as of men, and exercises great power."
one of the Fates and to be strong be- .... "Bupalos, the artist, first
yond her sisters." made a statue of Fortune for the
Menander : Supplementary Frag- Smyrnseans, of which we know that it
ments, i. " Fortune means all things had a polos or hemisphere on the head,
we know or do; but we are credited and in the left hand what is termed by
with them. Fortune directs all; and it the Greeks the horn of Amalthea."
behooves us to call her alone the god, *" Bronzi i'Ercolano, vol. ii. tav
mind, and thought, if we would not be xxvi. : also Medals of Leucadia.
amused by empty names."
176
 —

Ancient Art and Mythology. 85

Adonis (Astart^ and Baal);*" which signify the alternate

exertion of the generative and destructive attributes. Adonis
or Adonai was an Oriental (Phoenician and Hebrew) title of
the Sun, signifying Lord; and the boar, supposed to have
killed him, was the emblem of Winter;"' during which the
productive powers of nature being suspended, Venus was said
to lament the loss of Adonis until he was again restored to
life: whence both the Syrian and Argive women annually
mourned his death, and celebrated his renovation "' and the ;

mysteries of Venus and Adonis at Byblos in Syria were held

in similar estimation with those of Ceres and Bacchus at
Eleusis, and Isis and Osiris in ^gypt."' Adonis was said to
*"
pass six months with Proserpina, and six with Venus ;

whence some learned persons have conjectured that the alle-

gory was invented near the pole, where the sun disappears
daring so long a time *" but it may signify merely the
:

decrease and increase of the productive powers of nature as

the sun retires and advances.'"" The Vishnu or Juggernaut of
the Hindus is equally said to lie in a dormant state during the
four rainy months of that climate "° and the Osiris of the :

Egyptians was supposed to be dead or absent forty days in

each year, during which the people lamented '" his loss, as
the Syrians did that of Adonis, and the Scandinavians that of
Frey "' though at Upsal, the great metropolis of their wor-
;

ship, the sun never continues any one day entirely below the

*" SuiDAS : " Osiris being likewise •"»

LuciAN : De Dea Syria, xx. 6.
the same as Adonis, according to tlie "" Scholiast upon the Idyl of The-
the mystical method of blending the ooritus, iii. •' They say concerning
various gods." Adonis, that he dying, spent six
*" Hesychius upon Macroeius: months in the embraces of AphroditS
Saturnalia, i. further remarks,
20, and also in the embraces of Perse-
that " Adonis not considered as a
is phone."
distinct personage, but as Dionysus *" Ol-AUS Rudbeckius Atlantica, :

or Bacchus himself." No. II. iii. Baillie De VAstroncmie :

Plutarch: Symposiacs, iv. 5. "It Ancienm.

is said that Adonis was slain by a
boar. Now Adonis is supposed to be
thesame with Bacchus; and many
in the worship of each confirm this
opinion."
Ar the boar that slew Adonis was
the symbol or representative of Ares
or Mars, the god of strife and destruc-
tion. The legend represents the end
^^^ Plutarch
Ids and : Osiris, 69.
" The Phrygians, believing their god
rites to be asleep during the winter and
awake in summer, in celebrating the
orgies of Bacchus commemorate both
those events. Paphlagonians pray and
intercede for the winter to break up
and terminate."
"' Holwell Part II. p. 125.
:

of stmnner as well as human life by ""^ Am. Marcellin. xix. c. I. Ut

the genius of winter and Death. lacrymare cultrices Veneris sa;pe spec-
A. W. tantur in solemnibus Adonidis sacris,
"* LuciAN De Dea Syria. Pau-
: quod simulacrum aliquod esse frugum
sanias : Corinth, xx. 5. Ezekiel, viii. adultarum religiones mysticse decent.
16 "'THEOPHiLUS:orf.,4«fc/)'^.i. p. 75.
181
86 The Symbolical Language of

horizon.'" The story of the Phoenix, or, as that fabulous bird

was called in the north, of the Fanina, appears to have been
an allegory of the same kind, as was also the Phrygian tale
concerning Cybele and Atys though variously distinguished ;

by the fictions of poets and mythographers."'

THE SWINE A SACRIFICIAL ANIMAL.

121. On some of the very ancient Greek coins of Acanthus

in Macedonia we find a lion killing a boar ;"' and in other
monuments a dead boar appears carried in solemn proces-
sion "* by both which was probably meant the triumph of
;

Adonis in the destruction of his enemy at the return of spring.

A young pig was also the victim offered preparatory to ini-
tiation into the Eleusinian mysteries,"" which seems to have
been intended to express a similar compliment to the Sun.
The Phrygian Atys, like the Syrian Adonis, was fabled to
have been killed by a boar, or, according to another tradition,
by Mars in the shape of that animal '" and his death and
;

resurrection were annually celebrated in the same manner."'

The beauty of his person, and the style of his dress, caused his
statues to be confounded with those of Paris, who appears also
to have been canonised and it is probable that a symbolical
;

composition representing him in the act of fructifying nature,

attended by power and wisdom, gave rise to the story of the
Trojan prince's adjudging the prize of beauty between the
three contending goddesses a story which appears to have ;

been wholly unknown who have celebra-

to the ancient poets,
ted the events of the war supposed to have arisen from it.
The fable of Ganymedes, the cup-bearer of Jupiter, seems to
have arisen from some symbolical composition of the same
kind, at first misunderstood, and afterwards misrepresented in
poetical fiction for the lines in the Iliad alluding to it, are,
:

as before observed, spurious and according to Pindar, the ;

most orthodox perhaps of all the poets, Ganymedes was not

the son of Laomedon, but a mighty genius or deity who regu-
lated or caused the overflowings of the Nile by the motion ol
his feet."' His being, therefore, the cup-bearer of Jupiter, means
no more than that he was the distributor of the waters be-
*" Ol. Rudbeck. : Atlantic, p. ii. c. "" Aristophanes Peace, 374.
:

V. p. 153. *" NoNNUS :Dionysiacs. "Ares

'" Ol. Rudbeck. : p. ii. c. iii. et v. (Mars) in the form of a boar, with
NoNNis : Diotiys. M. 396. savage teeth, bringing death, came to
^"'
Pelerin;vo1. I. pi. xxx. No. 17. weave the web of fate about Adonis."
*" On a marble fragment in relief in *"' Strabo : x. Julian: Orations, v.
the Townley-Collection. "^ Scholiast upon Aratus.
182
.-.Ci^^i-^-f-'g^^'^^^^
 ; ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 87

tween heaven and and consequently a distinct personi-

earth,
which is otherwise signified
fication of that attribute of Jupiter,
by the epithet Fluvius. Hence he is only another modification
of the same personification, as Atys, Adonis, and Bacchus
who are all occasionally represented holding the cup or
patera; which is also given, with the cornucopias, to their
subordinate emanations, the local genii of which many small ;

figures in brass are extant.

122. In the poetical tales of the ancient Scandinavians,
Frey, the deity of the Sun, was fabled to have been killed by
a boar; which was therefore annually offered to him at the
great feast of Juul (Yule), celebrated during the winter-
solstice."* Boars of paste were also served on their tables
during the feast which being kept till the following spring,
:

were then beaten to pieces and mixed with the seeds to be sown
and with the food of the cattle and hinds employed in tilling
the ground.'"' Among the .(Egyptians likewise, those who
could not afford to sacrifice real pigs, had images of them
in paste served up at the feasts of Bacchus or Osiris,"' which
seem, like the feasts of Adonis in Syria, and the Yule in
Sweden, to have been expiatory solemnities meant to honor
and conciliate the productive power of the Sun by the sym-
bolical destruction of the adverse or inert power. From an
ancient fragment preserved by Plutarch, it seems that Mars,
considered as the destroyer, was lepresented by a boar among
the Greeks "' and on coins we find him wearing the boar's,
;

as Hercules wears the lion's skin "' in both of which in- ;

stances the old animal symbol is humanised, as almost all the

animal symbols gradually were by the refinement of Grecian
art.
123. From this symbolical use of the boar to represent the
destroying or rather the anti-generative attribute, probably
arose the abhorrence of swine's flesh, which prevailed univer-
sally among the .^Egyptians and Jews, and partially in other
countries, particularly in Pontus where the temple of Venus ;

at Comana was kept so strictly pure from the pollution of

such enemies, that a pig was never admitted into the city.""
The Egyptians are said also to have signified the inert power
of Typhon by an ass "" but among the ancient inhabitants of

*" Olaus Rudbeckius : part I., not that Ares in the form of a boar,
and part II., v.
v., viii. sets all evils in commotion."
«* Olaus Rudbeckids. "68 gee brass coins of Rome, common
«6 Herodotus ii. 47, and Macro-
: in all countries.
Bius : Saturnalia, i. 20. "s'
Strabo xii. p. 575.
™ ^lian
:

»" Plutarch:
Of Love, 13. " For : De Anim. x. xxviii.
blind, oh women, is he who perceives

187
 ;;

88 The Symbolical Language of

Italy,and probably the Greeks, this animal appears to have

been a symbol of an opposite kind,"' and is therefore per-
petually found in the retinue of Bacchus the dismemberment :

of whom by the Titans was an allegory of the same kind as

the death of Adonis and Atys by the boar, and the dismember-
ment of Osiris by Typhon *" whence his festivals were in the
;

spring *" and at Athens, as well as in ^gypt, Syria, and

;

Phrygia, the Aphanismos and Egersis, or death and revival, were

celebrated, the one with lamentations, and the other with re-
joicing.*"

PROMETHEUS AND THE VULTURE.

124. The stories of Prometheus were equally allegorical

for Prometheus was only a title of the Sun, expressing /rw/-
dence"" ox foresight, wherefore his being bound in the extremi-
ties of the earth, signified originally no more than the restric-
tion of the power of the sun during the winter months
though it has been variously embellished and corrupted by
the poets, partly, perhaps, from symbolical compositions ill
understood, for the vulture might have been naturally em-
ployed as an emblem of the destroying power. Another em-
*" Juvenal Satires, xi. 96. Colu- " Yet who like me advanced
:
To their high dignity our new-raised gods ?
mella X. 344.
:
. . . All ttie secret treasures
•" Plutarch " The sufferings re-
: Deep buried in the bowels of the earth,
Brass, iron, silver, gold, their use to man.
lated in the chants concerning Diony-
Let the vain tongue make what high vaunts
sus and the crimes of the Titans it may,
against him, etc., the whole related as Are my inventions all and, in a word,
;

a fable, is a myth concerning the re-
turn to life."
Isis and Osiris : 54. " They do not
simply propound in the legend that
the soul of Osiris is perpetual and in-
corruptible, but that his body is re-
peatedly torn in pieces and concealed
by Typhon."
"' " The festival of Bromius (Bac-
chus) occurring in spring."
^" Demosthenes : The Crown.
Julius Firmicius.
•"' Pindar : Olympic Odes
81.
The story of Prometheus has an
oriental aspect, and is older than
the Grecian mythology. He is styled
by Lycophron, Daimon Promatheos
Aithiops, the ^Ethiopian God Prome-
theus. It is most improbable there-
fore that liis designation expressed
"providence or foresight." He be-
longed, as even the Greeks acknowl-
edge, to a previous era as well as race.
jEschylus says ;
Prometheus taught each useful art to man."
According to Bryant (Analysis of
Ancient Mythology, ii. p. 140), Prome-
theus was worshipped as a deity by
the Colchians, a nation kindred with
the .(Egyptians, and had a temple on
Mount Caucasus, called the Typhonian
Rock, the device over the gate of
which was an eagle over a heart. This
was a symbol of Egypt, the eagle
being the crest and the heart the em-
blem of that country.
vi. Diodorus asserts that Prometheus
was an Egyptian deity, and one of the
Orphic hymns identifies him also with
Kronos or Saturn. Dunlap, in his
Spirit-History of Man, makes the
name synonymous with the Hindu
Agni, " the fire upon the altar," and
Col. Wilford finds it in the designa-
tion Pramathas, the servants or vota-
ries of Maha Deva, that were de-
stroyed by the bird Garuda, the cele-
brated enemy of the Serpent-tribes, or
Naga- worshippers. —A. W
Prometheus and the Vulture.

Venus and wounded Adonis-

 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 89

blem of this power, much distinguished in the ancient Scandi-

navian mythology, was the wolf, who in the last day was ex-
pected to devour the sun "" and among the symbolical orna-
;

ments of a ruined mystic temple at Puzzuoli, we find a wolf

devouring grapes, which being the fruit peculiarly consecrated
to Bacchus, are not unfrequently employed to signify that god.
Lycopolis, in ^gypt, takes its name from the sacred wolf kept
there; *" and upon the coins of Carthsea, in the island of Ceos,
the forepart of this animal appears surrounded with diverging
rays, as the centre of an asterisk/"

PUTREFACTION ABHORRED.

125. As putrefaction was the most general means of natu-

ral destruction or dissolution, the same spirit of superstition
which turned every other operation of nature into an object
of devotion, consecrated it to the personification of the de-
stroying power ; whence, in the mysteries and other sacred
rites belonging to the generative attributes, everything putrid,
or that had a tendency to putridity, was carefully avoided
and so strict were the Egyptian priests upon this point, that
they wore no garments made of any animal substance, but cir-
cumcised themselves, and shaved their whole bodies even to
their eyebrows, lest they should unknowingly harbor any
filth, excrement, or vermin supposed to be bred from putrefac-
tion/'" The common fly, being, in its first stage of existence,
a principal agent in dissolving and dissipating all putrescent
bodies, was adopted as an emblem of the Deity to represent
the destroying attribute; whence the Baal-Zebub, or Jupiter
Fly of the Phoenicians, when admitted into the creed of the
Jews, received the rank and office of Prince of the Devils.""

^" S^MOND : Edda, liii. day, that no lice or other impure thing
" The Wolf will devour may adhere to them when they are en-
The Father of the ages." gaged in the service of the gods.
See also Mallet Introduction a
: Their dress is entirely of linen, and
VHistoire de Danemarc, vi. their shoes of the paper-plant it is ;

"' Macroeius : Saturnalia, i. xvii. not lawful for them to wear either
•"* The wolf is also the device on dress or shoes of any other material."
the coins of Argos. '*''
See Inman : Ancient Faiths
^"Herodotus : ii. 37. " They Embodied in Ancient Names, \o\. i. -p.
drink out of brazen cups, which they 328. " Baalzebub, or Beelzebub, is
scour every day there is no exception
; usually said to mean * my Lord of
to this practice. They wear linen gar- flies,' but this seems to me to be ab-

ments, which they are specially care- surd. The word zabab signifies ' to
ful to have always fresh-washed. They murmur,' * hum,' or buzz,' and when
*

practice circumcision for the sake of we remember the Memnons in Egypt,

cleanliness, considering it better to be which gave out a murmur at sunrise,
cleanly than comely. The priests I think it more consistent with what
shave their whole body every third we know of priestly devices, to con-
191
90 The Symbolical Language of

The symbol was humanised at an early period, probably by

the Phoenicians themselves, and thus formed into one of those
fantastic compositions which ignorant antiquaries have taken
for wild efforts of disordered imagination, instead of regular
productions of systematic art.*"

BACCHUS AND THE LEOPARDS.

126.Bacchus frequently appears accompanied by leo-

pards,'" which in some instances are employed in devouring
clusters of grapes, and in others, drinking the liquor pressed
from them though they are in reality incapable of feeding
;

upon that or any other kind of fruit. On a very ancient coin

of Acanthus, too, the leopard is represented, instead of the
lion, destroying the bull "' wherefore we have no doubt that
;

in the Bacchic processions, it means the destroyer accompany-

ing the generator, and contributing, by different means, to the
same end. In some instances his chariot is drawn by two
leopards, and in others, by a leopard and a goat coupled
together,'" which are all different means of signifying different
modes and combinations of the same ideas. In the British
Museum is a group in marble of three figures, the middle one
a human form growing out of a vine, with leaves and clusters
of grapes growing out of its body. On one side is an andro-
gynous figure representing the Mises or Bacchus Diphues, and
on the other, a leopard, with a garland of ivy round its neck,
leaping up and devouring the grapes, which spring from the
body of the personified vine, the hands of which are employed
in receiving another cluster from the Bacchus. This compo-
sition represents the vine between the creating and destroying
attributes of the Deity, the one giving it fruit, and the other
devouring it when given. The poets conveyed the same

"
My
sider that the word signifies ' Lord plied the deity -names Seth, or Satan,
that murmurs.' and Baal-Zebub, to the Evil Potency.
Ancient clairvoyants or interpreters — A. W.
of oracles spoke with a muttering "' See WlNKELMANi jI/ok. an/. ;Wa'.
voice, as if from the ground. See No. 13; and Hist, dcs Arts, Liv. iii.

Isaiah, viii. ig, and xxix. 4. Baal- c. ii. p. 143.

Zebub, of Ekron, was consulted as •"*
These are frequently called
an oracle. But in the New Testa, by the
tigers; but the first tiger seen
ment, the name is often written Beel- Greeks or Romans was presented by
Zebul, the latter term signifying an the ambassadors of India to Augustus,
abode or habitation. The combina- while settling the affairs of Asia, in
tion may therefore mean Baal of the the year of Rome 734. (DiON. Cass.
Temple. After the return of the Hist. liv. s. 9.)

Jews from Babylonia, the Asideans, ^'^ In the cabinet of Mr. Knight,
or Maccabean party (afterwards known ^'^ See medal of Maronea. Ges-
as Pharisees or Parsees), bringing Zo- NER. tab. xliii. fig. 26.
roastrian sentiments with them, ap-

192
 A7icient Art and Mythology. 91

meaning in the allegorical tales of the Loves of Bacchus and

Ampelus, who, as the name indicates, was only the vine per-
sonified

THE CHIMjERA.

127. The Chimera, of which so many whimsical interpreta-

tions have been given seems
by the commentators on the Iliad,
to have been an emblematical composition of the same class,
vailed, as usual, under historical fable to conceal its meaning
from the vulgar. It was composed of the forms of the goat,
the lion, and the serpent, the symbols of the generator, de-
stroyer, and preserver united and animated by fire, the essen-
tial principle of all the three. The old poet had probably
seen such a figure in Asia, but knowing nothing of mystic
lore, which does not appear to have reached Greece or her
colonies in his time, received whatever was told him concern-
ing it. In later times, however, it must have been a well-
known sacred symbol, or it would not have been employed as
a device upon coins.

APOLLO AND PYTHON.

128. The fable of Apollo destroying the serpent Python,

seems equally to have originated from the symbolical language
of imitative art, the title Apollo signifying, according to the
etymology already given, the destroyer as well as the deliv-
erer for, as the ancients supposed destruction to be merely
;

dissolution, as creation was merely formation, the power

which delivered the particles of matter from the bonds of
attraction and broke the dta^xov nepifipidri epooTO?, was in
fact the destroyer. Hence the verb ATD, or ATMI (Luo or
LuMi), from which it is derived, means both to free and to de-
stroy^'^ Pliny mentions a statue of Apollo by Praxiteles,
much celebrated in his time, called Sauroktonos,"' the lizard-
killer, of which several copies are now extant."' The lizard,
being supposed to exist upon the dews and moisture of the
earth, was employed as the symbol of humidity so that the ;

god destroying it, signifies the same as the lion devouring the
horse, and Hercules killing the Centaur, that is, the sun, ex-
haling the waters. When destroying the serpent, he only sig-
nifies a different application of the same power to the extinc-
tion of life whence he is called Pythias,*'' or the putrefier,
;

<*' See Iliad, i. 20, and i. 25. ^'' Macrobius : Saturnalia, I. xvii.
**' Pliny: xxxiv. c. viii. " Pythius, (torn, ftithein, i. e. sepein, to
"' See Winkelman: Man. ant. putrefy."
ined. pi. xl.

199
92 The Symbolical Language of

from the verb nvdao. The title Smintheus, too, supposing it to

mean, according to the generally received interpretation,
mouse-killer, was expressive of another application of the same
attribute ; for the mouse was a priapic animal,"' and is fre-

quently employed as such in monuments of ancient art.""

The statue, likewise, which Pausanias mentions, of Apollo
with his foot upon the head of a bull, is an emblem of similar
meaning.'"
129. The offensive weapons of this deity, which are the
symbols of the means by which he exerted his characteristic
attribute, are the bow and arrows, signifying the emission
of its rays of which the arrow or dart, the bdos or obelos,
;

was, as before observed, the appropriate emblem. Hence he

is called ^<5flTnP, 'EKAT02, and 'EKATHB0A02, and
also Chrusaor and Chrusaorus, which have a similar significa-
tion ;the first syllable expressing the golden color of rays,
and the others their erect position for aor does not signify
:

merely a sword, as a certain writer, upon the authority of com-

mon Latin Versions and school Lexicons, has supposed but ;

anything that is held up it being the substantive of the verb

;

aeiro.

HERCULES IDENTICAL WITH APOLLO AND MARS.

130. Hercules destroying the Hydra, signifies exactly the

same and the lizard ""' the
as Apollo destroying the serpent
;

water-snake comprehending both symbols, and the ancient

Phoenician Hercules being merely the lion humanised. The
knowledge of him appears to have come into Europe by the
way of Thrace he having been worshipped in the island of
;

Thasus, by the Phoenician colony settled there, five generations

before the birth of the Theban hero "' who was distinguished ;

*" .iElian : History of Animals, tion ot the many-headed Nagas of

xii. 10. India, and is the designation of a con-
The appellation Smin-iheus would stellation in the sky. As the Phos-
seem rather to affiliate Apollo with nician Hercules is the same as Cro-
.

the Hindu deity Ganesa,
accompanied by a rat. —
^^ It was the device upon the coins
A. W.
of Argos (Jul. Poll. Onom. ix. vi. 86),
probably before the adoption of the
wolf, which is on most of those now
extant. A small one, however, in
gold, with the mouse, is in the cabinet
who is always nos, or Moloch, the Sun-God, the
slaying of the Hydra is the poetic or
mythological method of mentioning
the entering of the sun into the signs
of the zodiac which lie near that con-
stellation. The identity of Hercules
with Apollo, Bacchus, and Mars is
certain enough the intelligent among
;

of Mr. R. P. Knight. the ancients did not believe in the

^" Pausanias Achaica, xx. 2.
:

"" Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 50.

current polytheism.
*™
—A. W.
: Herodotus : ii. 44.
The Hydra is evidently a reproduc-
Herakles between Vice and Vir
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 93

by the same title that he obtained in Greece, and whose ro-

mantic adventures have been confounded with the allegorical
fables related of him. In the Homeric times, he appears to
have been utterly unknown to the Greeks, the Hercules of the
Iliad and Odyssey being a mere man, pre-eminently distin-
guished, indeed, for strength and valor, but exempt from none
of the laws of mortality."' His original symbolical arms, with
which he appears on the most ancient medals of Thasus, were
the same as those of Apollo; "' and his Greek name, which,
according to the most probable etymology, signifies the glori-
fier of the earth, is peculiarly applicable to the Sun.
The Romans held him to be the same as Mars "° who was ;

sometimes represented under the same form, and considered

as the same deity as Apollo; "' and in some instances we find
him destroying the vine instead of the Serpent,*" the deer, the
centaur, or the bull by all which the same meaning, a little
;

differently modified, is conveyed but the more common repre-

:

sentation of him destroying the lion is not so easily explained ;

and it is probable that the traditional history of the deified

hero has, in this instance as well as some others, been blended
with the allegorical fables of the personified attribute for we :

have never seen any composition of this kind upon any monu-
ment of remote antiquity."'

THE PILLARS ASCRIBED TO SESOSTRIS.

131. Upon the pillars which existed in the time of Hero-

dotus in diiferent parts of Asia, and which were attributed by
the Egyptians to Sesostris, and by others to Memnon, was en-
graved the figure of a man holding a spear in his right hand,
and a bow in his left to which was added, upon some of them,
;

"'' Homer Iliad, xviii. 117, and

: was bom of Leto, and Ares of Hera ;

Odyssey, xi. 5oo. The three lines re- but the potency of both is the same,
lating to the apotheosis of Hercules, ... So also, Hera and Leto are
are interpolated. They declare that two appellations of a single divinity."
" he himself is one of the immortal ^™ Mus, Florent. in gemm. t. i. pi.
gods, delighting himself at their feasts, xcii. Q.
and wedded to fair-limbed Heb6." ""' The earliest coins which we have
i9t
StrabO: XV. 688- Athen^us: xii. seen with this device, are of Syracuse,
It is apparent that as the sun-god of Tarentum, and Heraclea in Italy all ;

the Phoenicians, Hercules is identical
with Apollo, the sun-god of Greece,
The club was given him by the epic
poets. The name Hercules is evi-
dently from the Sanscrit Her'calyus,
—
Lord of the tribe or city. A. W.
of the finest time of the art, and little
anterior to the Macedonian conquest.
On the more ancient medals of Seli-
nus, Hercules is destroying the bull,
as the lion or leopard is on those of
Acanthus and the destroying a cen
;

*" Varro. See Macrobius Sa- : taur signifies exactly the same as a
tumalia, i. 44. lion destroying a horse ; the symbols
^" Plutarch See Eusebius Pra- : being merely humanised.
paratio Evangelica, iii. i. "Apollo
203
 ;

94 The Symbolical Language of

the female aidoia, said by the Egyptians to have been meant as

a memorial of the cowardice and effeminacy of the inhabitants,
whom their monarch had [subdued."" The whole composition
was however, probably, symbolical signifying the active power
;

of destruction, and passive power of generation whose co-oper- ;

ation and conjunction are signified in so many various ways in

the emblematical monuments of ancient art. The figure hold-
ing the spear and the bow is evidently the same as appears
upon the ancient Persian coins called Varies, and upon those
of some Asiatic cities, in the Persian dress; but which, upon
those of others, appears with the same arms, and in the same
attitude, with the lion's skin upon its head."' This attitude is
that of kneeling upon one knee; which is that of the Phoeni-
cian Hercules upon the coins of Thasus above cited where- :

fore we have no doubt that he was the personage meant to be

represented as he continued to be afterward upon the Bac-
;

trian and Parthian coins. The Hindus have still a correspond-

ing deity, whom they call Rama, and the modern Persians a
fabulous hero called Rustam, whose exploits are in many re-
spects similar to those of Hercules, and to whom they attribute
all the stupendous remains of ancient art found in their coun-
try.

APOLLO AND DIONYSUS, THE DAY-SUN AND THE NIGHT-SUN.

was observed, by the founders of the mystic system,

132. It
that the destructive power of the Sun was exerted most by day,
and the generative by night for it was by day that it dried up
:

the waters and produced disease and putrefaction and by ;

night that it returned the exhalations in dews tempered with

the genial heat that had been transfused into the atmosphere.
Hence, when they personified the attributes, they worshipped
the one as the diurnal
a.n(l the other as the nocturnal sun ; call-

ing the one Apollo, and the other Dionysus or Bacchus;""

both of whom were anciently observed to be the same god
'""'Herodotus: ii. 102, 106.
"" See coins of Mallus in Cilicia,
and Soli :n Cyprus in the Hunter Col-
lection.
'»* Macrobius: 53^ c. i8. Insa-
cris enim hsec religiosi arcani obser-
vantia tenetur, ut Sol, cum in supero,
id est in diurno hemisphierio est, Apol-
lo vocitetur ; cum in infero, id est noc-
turno, Dionysus, qui et Liber pater
habeatur. Hence Sophocles calls Bac-
chus " Leader of the chori of flame-
breathing sta.TS," apuJ Eustath. p. 514,
und he had temples dedicated to him
under correspondent titles. Pausani-
AS: Attica, xl. 5. "This the temple
of Dionysus of the Night-Orgies."
Pausanias Act. xxvii. 2.
:
" The
sanctuary of Dionysus, called the
Torch-bearer." Osiris was also lord of
the Underworld. Herodotus: ii. 123.
" The .(Egyptians say that Deraeter
and Dionysus (Isis and Osiris) preside
below." Macrobius also declares (Sa-
tumalia, i. 17) ; "Aristoteles, qui theo-
logumena scripsit, ApoUinem et Li-
berum patrem unum eundemque deum
esse, cum multis argumentis asserit."

204
Slllli!

Apollon. Meleager
 ' ; "

Ancient Art and Mythology. 95

whence, in a verse of Euripides, they are addressed as one, the

names being used as epithets.'" The oracle at Delphi was
also supposed to belong to both equally; or, according to
the expression of a Latin poet, to the united and mixed divin-
ity of both.'"
This mixed divinity appears to have been represented
133.
in theperson of the Apollo Didymseus, who was worshipped in
another celebrated oracular temple near Miletus, and whose
symbolical image seems to be exhibited in plates xii. xliii. and
iv.of volume I. of the Select Specimens, and in different com-
positions on different coins of the Macedonian kings some- ;

times sitting upon the prow of a ship, as lord of the waters, or

Bacchus Hyes °" sometimes on the cortina, the vailed cone
;

or ^^^ and sometimes leaning upon a tripod ; but always in

;

an androgynous form, with the limbs, tresses, and features of a

woman and holding the bow or arrow, or both, in his hands.""
;

The double attribute, though not the double sex, is also fre-
quently signified in figures of Hercules either by the cup or ;

cornucopias held in his hand, or by the chaplet of poplar or

some other symbolical plant, worn upon his head while the ;

club or lion's skin indicates the adverse power.

134. In the refinement of art, the forms of the lion and goat
were blended into one fictitious animal to represent the same
meaning, instances of which occur upon the medals of Capua,
Panticapaeum, and Antiochus VI., king of Syria, as wfeU as in
the frieze of the temple of Apollo Didymaeus before mentioned.
In the former, too, the destroying attribute is further signified
by the point of a spear held in the mouth of the monster; and
the productive, by the ear of corn under his feet.'" In the lat-
ter, the result of both is shown by the lyre, the symbol of uni-
versal narmony, which is supported between them and which ;

is occasionally given to Hercules, as well as to Apollo. The

two-faced figure of Janus seems to have been a composite sym-
bol of the same kind, and to have derived the name from lao
or laon, an ancient mystic title of Bacchus. The earliest spe-
cimens of it extant are on the coins of Lampsacus and Tene-

"" Macrobius Saturnalia, i. 17.

: (generation), and being no other than
" Lord, lover of Daphne, Bacchus, Osiris.
Paian, Apollo." See medals of Antigonus, Antio-
'»•
™
LucAN. ./'.^arjuA'a, V. 73. "The chus I., Seleucus II. and III., and
mount sacred to Phoebus and Bromius other kings of Syria and also of
;

to whom in joint divinity the Theban Magnesia ad Mseandrum, and ad Si-

Bacchse celebrate the triennial fes- pylum. The beautiful figure engraved
tival. on plates xliii. and iv. of vol. i. of the
'"' Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 3^.
. Select Specimens is the most exquisite
"They (Greeks) call Dionysus also example of this androgynous Apollo.
Hyes as jord of the moist nature "" Numm. Pembrok. tab. v. fi?. 12.

207
96 The Symbolical Language of

dos some of which can not be later than the sixth century
;

before the Christian era and in later coins of the former city,
;

heads of Bacchus of the usual form and character occupy its

place.
The mythological personages Castor and Pollux, who
135.
lived and died alternately, were the same as Bacchus and
Apollo whence they were pre-eminently distinguished by the
:

title of the Great Gods in some places; though, in others, con-

founded with the canonised or deified mortals, the brothers of
Helen."' Their fabulous birth from the e.^Z-, the form of
which is retained in the caps usually worn by them, is a rem-
nant of the ancient mystic allegory, upon which the more
recent poetical tales have been engrafted whilst the two ;

asterisks, and the two human heads, one going upward and
the other downward, by which they are occasionally repre-
sented, more distinctly point out their symbolical meaning,""
which was the alternate appearance of the sun in the upper
and lower hemispheres. This meaning, being a part of
what was revealed in the Mysteries, is probably the reason
why Apuleius mentions the seeing of the sun at midnight zvaong
the circumstances of initiation, which he has obscurely and
enigmatically related.""
136. As the appearance of the one necessarily implied the
cessation of the other, the tomb of Bacchus was shown at Delos
near to the statue of Apollo ; and one of these mystic tombs,"'
in the form of a large chest of porphyry, adorned with goats,
leopards, and other symbolical figures, is still extant in a
church at Rome. The mystic cistx, which were carried in
procession occasionally, and in which some emblem of the
generative or preserving attribute was generally kept, appear
to have been merely models or portable representations of
these tombs,"" and to have had exactly the same signification.
By the mythologists Bacchus is said to have terminated his ex-
pedition in the extremities of the East and Hercules in the ex- ;

'"'
Pausanias: i. and iii. They
were also denominated anakes, from
the Phoenician term anak^ a prince,
The Scholiast on Lucian remarks
"The temple of the Dioscuri was
ctAXzA. Anakeion : for they were called
anakes by the Greelcs."
"" See medals of Istrus.
"° Apuleius : The GMen Ass.
'"The words tophos, tufh, and toph,
so common as a part of Egyptian
names, signifies a high place, and, as
Bryant declares, were applied to the
mounds created to the deities.
/wwiJjofthe divinities, Bacchus, Jupiter,
etc., were but these sacred hillocks or
steles misnamed. They were general-
: ly surrounded by temenS or enclosures.
Cities so distinguished were called Ty-
phonian. See Analysis of Ancient
—
Mythology, ii. 167-195. A. W.
"* The cistce pertain to the sexual
xi. rather than to the funereal symbolism ;
and the emblems which they contained
were peculiar to the phallic rites,
See Inman : Ancient Faiths Embodiei
in Ancient Names, —
i. p. 2?:'i. A. W.
The
20S
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 97

West which means no more than that the noc-

tremities of the ;

turnal sun finishes its progress, when it mounts above the

surrounding ocean in tlie East and the diurnal, when it passes
;

the same boundary of the two hemispheres in the West.

137. The latter being represented by the lion, explains
the reason why the spouts of fountains were always made to
imitate lions' heads which Plutarch supposes to have been,
;

because the Nile overflowed when the sun was in the sign of
the Lion "' but the same fashion prevails as universally in
:

Thibet as ever it did in ^gypt, Greece, or Italy though neither ;

the Grand Lama nor any of his subjects know anything of the
Nile or its overflowings and the signs of the zodiac were
;

taken from the mystic symbols and not, as some learned

;

authors have supposed, the mystic symbols from the signs of the
zodiac. The emblematical meaning, which certain animals
were employed to signify, was only some particular property
generalised and, therefore, might easily be invented or dis-
;

covered by the natural operation of the mind but the collec- :

tions of stars, named after certain animals, have no resem-

blance whatever to those animals which are therefore merely ;

signs of convention adopted to distinguish certain portions of

the heavens, which were probably consecrated to those particu-
lar personified attributes, which they respectively represented.
That they had only begun to be so named in the time of Ho-
mer, and that not on account of any real or supposed resem-
blance, we have the testimony of a passage in the description of
the shield of Achilles, in which the polar constellation is said
to be called the Bear, or otherwise the Wagon "* objects so \

different that it is impossible that one and the same thing

should be even imagined to resemble both. We may there-
fore rank Plutarch's explanation with other tales of the later
Egyptian priests and conclude that the real intention of
;

these symbols was to signify that the water, which they con-
veyed, was the gift of the diurnal sun, because separated from
the salt of the sea, and distributed over the earth by exhala-
tion. Perhaps Hercules being crowned with the foliage of
the white poplar, an aquatic tree, may have had a similar
meaning; which is at least more probable than that assigned
by Servius and Macrobius.""

^'^ Plutarch : Symposiacs, iv. 5. the constellation Ursus, wagon, was

^'* Iliad, xvii. 487. also regarded as a vehan or wain. A. —
The wagon, or more properly vehan W.
(Sanscrit), was the vehicle or animal "° Commentary upon the ^neid,
which was supposed to carry a deity, viii. line 276.
in the Hindu system. It may be that Macrobius : Saturnalia, iii. 12.

209
 .

98 The Symbolical Language of

HEAT AND MOISTURE AS SEXUAL SYMBOLS.

Humidity in general, and particularly the Nile, was

138.
calledby the Egyptians the outflowing of Osiris; "° who was with
them the God of the Waters, in the same sense as Bacchus was
among the Greeks "' whence all rivers, when personified,
;

were represented under the form of the bull or at least with ;

some of the of that animal.'" In the

characteristic features
religion of the Hindus this article of ancient faith, like most
others, is still retained; as appears from the title, Daughter of
the Sun, given to the sacred river Yamuna or Jumna."* The
God of Destruction is also mounted on a white bull, the sacred
symbol of the opposite attribute, to show the union and co-
operation of both."" The same meaning is more distinctly repre-
sented in an ancient Greek fragment of bronze, by a lion tramp-
ling upon the head of a bull, while a double phallus appears
behind them, and shows the result.'" The title K02- 2nTHP
MOT, upon the composite Priapic figure, published by La
Chausse, is well known '" and it is probable that the ithy-
;

phallic ceremonies, which the gross flattery of the degenerate

Greeks sometimes employed to honor the Macedonian princes,"'
had the same meaning as this title of Saviour, which was fre-
quently conferred upon, or assumed by them.™ It was also
occasionally applied to most of the deities who had double at-
tributes, or were personifications of both powers as to Hercu- ;

les, Bacchus, Diana, etc.'"

"• Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 36.

:
"« Sir William Jones : Asiatic
" The priests of Egypt call not only Researches, vol. i
the Nile, but everything moist (like a '™ Maurice : Indian Antiquities,
pitcher of water) the outflowing of vol. i, p. 261.
Osiris." '2'On the handle of a vase in Mr.
'" Plutarch :Isis and Osiris, 33. Knight's Cabinet.
" The more learned in arcane matters '^'^
Roman Museum.
among the priests, not only term the "^ Athenaeus vi. 15. " The
:

Nile Osiris, and the Sea Typhon, but
they also regard Osiris to signify every
principle and potency of moisture,
venerating it as the cause of genera-
tion and the substance of the semen,
But by Typhon they mean everything
dried, fire-like, and withered, as being
opposed to moistness."
35. " The Greeks consider
Athenians received Demetrius not
only offering incense, wearing sacrifi-
cial garlands,and making libations of
wine, but likewise with chants, and
choruses, and Ithyphalli, accompanied
by the sacred dance and processions,"
as in the celebration of the Mysteries,
'"Athenaeus: vi. i6.
*' Pausanias Arcadia, xxxi. 4.
:

Dionysus not alone as the patron of " The Sun having the surname of So-
wine, but also of the entire moist or ter or Saviour, the same as Hercules."
generative principle in nature." See also coins of Thasos, Maronea
'" Horace Book iv. Ode xiv. Riv-
: Agathocles, etc.
ers so personified appear on the coins
o the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily.
 iyX^^"
Diana drawn by Nymphs.

Hunt.
Diana returned from a
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 99

DIANA THE MOON-GODDESS AND GREAT MOTHER.

139. Diana (or Artemis) was, as before observed, originally

and properly the Moon, by means of which the Sun was sup-
posed to impregnate the air, and scatter the principles of gen-
eration both active and passive over the earth whence, like :

the Bacchus diphues and Apollo didumaios, she was both male
and female,"' both heat and humidity for the warmth of the ;

Moon was supposed to be moistening, as that of the Sun was

drying.'" She was called the Mother of the World; and the
Daughter, as well as the Sister, of the Sun ^'^ because the pro- ;

ductive powers with which she impregnated the former, to-

gether with the light by which she was illuminated, were sup-
posed to be derived from the latter. By attracting or heaving
the waters of the ocean, she naturally appeared to be the sov-
ereign of humidity and by seeming to operate so powerfully
;

upon the constitutions of women, she equally appeared to be

the patroness and regulatress of nutrition and passive genera-
tion: whence she is said to have received her nymphs, or sub-
ordinate personifications, from the ocean "" and is often re- ;

presented by the symbol of the sea-crab °^° an animal that has ;

the property of spontaneously detaching from its own body

any limb that has been hurt or mutilated, and reproducing an-
other in its place. As the heat of the Sun animated the seminal
particles of terrestrial matter, so was the humidity of the Moon
supposed to nourish and mature them "' and as her orbit was ;

'"Plutarch: Ids and Osiris, a,'},. EVRltlDSS PAtenicians, ijS. "Oh

:

" They place the potency of Osiris in Selenaia (Moon), daughter of the
"
the Moon, and say that Isis being the bright-girdled Aelios (Sun) ]

maternal principle of generation, has Scholium upon the foregoingpassage:

intercourse with him. Whence they " So wrote jEschylus and the more phil-
call the Moon the Mother of the cos- osophical authors. But Hesiod de-
mical Universe, and to have both the clared that the Moon was the Sister of
male and female nature, being first the Sun."
filled by the Sun, and so made preg-
'"''^
.i^schylus : Prometheus Bound,
nant, and then sending forth into the 138.
air the generated principles, and so Callimachus Hymn : to Artemis;
inseminating them, as a male." also Catullus: In Cell.
'" Macrobius : Saturnalia, vii. 10. '^^Roman Mtcseutn, VII. vol. ii.
" The heat of the Sun dries, that of See coins of the Brettii in Italy,
the Moon makes moist." Himera in Sicily, etc.
Plutarch Isis and
: Osiris, 41. '5' Schol. Vet. in Horat. Carm. Sec.
The Moon, having the light which Duobus his reguntur omnia terrena,
makes moist and pregnant, is promo- calore quidem solis per diem, humore
live of the generating of living beings vero lunse per noctem. ut Nam
and of the fructification of plants." calore solis animantur semina, ita
'^' Plutarch : Isis and Osiris, 48. lunse humore nutriuntur, penes ipsam
" The Egyptian priests style the enira et corporum omnium ratio esse
Moon the Mother of the Universe." dictiur et potestas.

213
 "

loo The Symbolical Language of

neld to be the boundary that separated the celestial from the

terrestrial world,"" she was the mediatress between both the ;

primary subject of the one, and sovereign of the other, who

tempered the subtilty of sethereal spirit to the grossness of
earthly mater, so as to make them harmonise and unite."'
140. The Greeks attributed to her the powers of destruc-
tion as well as nutrition humidity as well as heat contribut-
;

ing to putrefaction whence sudden death was supposed to pro-

:

ceed from Diana as well as from Apollo who was both the send- ;

er of disease and the inventor of cure for disease is the father ;

of medicine as Apollo was fabled to be of .iEsculapius. The

rays of the Moon were thought relaxing, even to inanimate
bodies, by means of their humidity whence wood cut at the :

full of the moon was rejected by builders as improper for use."*

The Eilithyise, supposed to preside over child-birth, were only
personifications of this property,"' which seemed to facilitate
delivery by slackening the powers of resistance and obstruc-
tion and hence the crescent was universally worn as an
;

amulet by women, as it still continues to be in the southern

parts of Italy and Juno Lucina, and Diana, were the same
;

goddess, equally personifications of the Moon."'

141. The .(Egyptians represented the Moon under the sym-
bol of a cat, probably on account of that animal's power of see-
ing in the night and also, perhaps, on account of its fecun-
;

dity ; which seems to have induced the Hindus to adopt the

rabbit as the symbol of the same deified planet."' As the
LuciL. apiid Aul. (?<?/?. Lxx. c. 8.
: and liver, transmits below the heat
Luna alit ostrea et implet echinas, et
; of the parts above, and attracts the ex-
muribusfibraa, halations, thinning them for diges-
Etpecuiaddit.
tion and purgation. .. . Everywhere,
Ocellus Lucanus : OntheUni- by necessity, that which is better pre-
verse. " The Moon is
the isthmus vails over the other."
which connects the immortal life to iu Plutarch Symposiacs, iii. 10.
:

generated existence. <•

Even in soulless bodies the power of
Philo On Dreams, i. page 641.
: the Moon is evident. Builders refuse
" The philosophers depict the Moon- timbers cut in the full of the Moon, as
sphere which is the last of the heaven- being soft, and by reason of the super-
ly circles, but the first immediately abundant soft, liable to decay."
beyond us, as that of meteors ; the air mi>
Plutarch Symposiacs, iii. ro.
:

extends through everything to the "For this reason I believe Artemis

""''^ °^ "** earth." (Diana) to have been named Locheia
'"Jjf
'^Plutarch On the Face Ap-
: and Eileithyia, as being no other than
peanng in the Orb of the Moon, 15. the Moon."
" The Sun having the potency of the 636
Catullus xxxiv. 3. :

heat sends and diffuses its warmth " Tu Lucina dolent'lbus

and light like blood and breath. The Juno dicta puerperis,
land and sea are in the world as the Tu potens Trivia, et nos
bowels and bladder in the living ani- D'<='^ '""'"^ Luna."
mal. The Moon, placed between the '" Maurice :Indian Antiquities
Sun and the Earth like the liver or i. p. 513. Also Demetrius Phale-
some other viscus between the heart Rius : § 159.

214
 A7icie7it Art and Mythology. loi

arch or bend of the mystical instrument, borne by Isis, and

called the sistrum, represented the lunar orbit, the cat occupied
the centre of it ; while the rattles below represented the ter-
restrialelements;"' of which there are sometimes four, but
more frequently only three in the instances now extant for :

the ancient Egyptians, or at least some of them, appear to

have known that water and air are but one substance."*

DIANA AND ISA.

142. The Diana are always clothed, and she had

statues of
the which her common
attribute of perpetual virginity, to
Greek name Artemis seems to allude but the Latin name ap- ;

pears to be a contraction of Diviana, the feminine, according

'"
to the old Etruscan idiom, of Divus, or dl¥ 02, Difos ;

and therefore signifying the Goddess, or general female per-

sonification of the Divine nature, which the moon was prob-
ably held to be in the ancient planetary worship, which pre-
ceded the symbolical. As her titles and attributes were in-
numerable, she was represented under an infinite variety of
forms, and with an infinite variety of symbols sometimes ;

with three bodies, each holding appropriate emblems,*" to

signify the triple extension of her power, in heaven, on
earth, and under the earth and sometimes with phallic
;

radii enveloping a female form, to show the universal

generative attribute both active and passive.'" The figures of
her, as she was worshipped at Ephesus, seem to have con-
sisted of an assemblage of almost every symbol, attached to
the old humanised column, so as to form a composition purely
emblematical;'" and it seems that the ancient inhabitants of
the north of Europe represented their goddess Isa as nearly in
the same manner as their rude and feeble efforts in art could
accomplish ; she having the many breasts to signify the nutri-
and being surrounded by deers' horns instead
tive attribute,
of the animals themselves, which accompany the Ephesian
statues. In sacrificing, too, the reindeer to her, it was their

"'Plutarch: Ids and Osiris, 63. said to have been made by Alcamenes,
'^^ Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, 36. about the 84th Olympiad.
" The moist principle being the chief Pausanias ; Corinth, xxx. 2. " Alca-
and source of all things from the be- menes first made three statues of
ginning, produced the first three Hecate adhering together as one,
bodies, earth, air, and fire." which the Athenians call turreted."
"" Varro iv. 10.
: Lanzi Sopra :
"' See Duane's Coins of the Selea-
le Lingue Morte d Italia, vol. ii. page cidse.
194. "^ De la Chausse: Roman Mu-
"' La Chausse Roman Museum,
: seum, vol. I. ii.
vol. 1. § 2, title 20. These figures arc

215
 I02 The Symbolical Language of

custom to hang the testicles round the neck of the figure,"*

probably for the same purpose as the phallic radii, above men-
tioned, were employed to serve.

THE BLOODY RITES OF BRIMO.

Brimo, the Tauric and Scythic Diana, was the de-

143.
troyer; whence she was appeased with human victims and
other bloody rites; "" as was also Bacchus the devourer; "" who
seems to have been a male personification of the same attri-
bute, called by a general title which confounds him with
another personification of a directly opposite kind. It was at
the altar of Brimo, called at Sparta Artemis Orthia or Orthosia,
that the Lacedaemonian boys voluntarily stood to be whipped
until their lives were sometimes endangered "' and it was :

during the festival of Bacchus' at Alea, that the Arcadian

women annually underwent a similar penance, first imposed by
the Delphic Oracle but probably less rigidly enforced."' Both
;

appear to have been substitutions for human sacrifices,'" which

the stern hierarchies of the North frequently performed and ;

to which the Greeks and Romans resorted upon great and

awful occasions, when real danger had excited imaginary
fear."° It is probable, therefore, that drawing blood, though
in ever so small a quantity, was necessary to complete the rite :

for blood being thought to contain the principles of life, the

smallest effusion of it at the altar might seem a complete sac-
rifice, by being a libation of the soul the only part of the vic- ;

tim which the purest believers of antiquity supposed the Deity

to require.'" In other respects, the form and nature of these
rites prove them to have been expiatory; which scarcely any
of the religious ceremonies of the Greeks or Romans were.
144. It is in the character of the destroying attribute, that
Diana is called Tauropola, and Boon Elateia, in allusion to her
being borne or drawn by bulls, like the Destroyer among the

'•"
Olaus RuDBECKius ^//a«ftV3,
:
"' Pausantas : Arcadia, 22,. "At
vol. ii. pp. 212, 277, 291, 292, figs. 30, the festival of Dionysus, near the Ora-
31. cle of Delphi, women are scourged, as
"' Lycophron Cassandra,
: 1176. also are the young men among the
"Brimo tritiiorphos" Brimo — three- Spartans by the Orthia."
visaged. '" Pausanias : Laconia. " The
TzETZES : Scholium. Brimo is " practice of sacrificing whomever the
said to be the same as Hecate and . . . lot indicated, Lycurgus changed into
Persephone as Brimo and Hecate
: scourging of the young men."
and Persephone are the saiTie." "" PuJTARCH Themistocles.
: Also
See Johannes Meursius. Parallels between Grecian and Ro-
"°" Dionysus Omadius, the cruel." man History, 20. LiVY: History oj
See Porphyry. jRome.
"' Plutarch : Lycurgus. '" Strabo : xv.

216
 0P
#'

\ \\ Hr^' '
/I 'J

ffiS

^
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 103

Hindus before mentioned and it is probable that some such

;

symbolical composition gave rise to the fable of Jupiter and

Europa for it appears that in Phoenicia, Europa and Astarte
;

were only different titles for the same personage, who was the
deity of the Moon;"" comprehending both the Diana and
Celestial Venus of the Greeks: whence the latter was occa-
sionally represented armed like the former; '" and also distin-
guished by epithets, which can be properly applied only to the
planet, and which are certainly derived from the primitive
planetary worship."" Upon the celebrated ark or box of
Cypselus, Diana was represented winged, and holding a lion
in one hand and a leopard in the other "" to signify the de-;

stroying attribute, instead of the usual symbols of the bow

and arrow; and in an ancient temple near the mouth of the
Alpheus she was represented riding upon a griffin;"" an
emblematical monster composed of the united forms of the
lion and eagle, the symbols of destruction and dominion."'
As ruling under the earth, she was the same as Proserpina
except that the latter had no reference to the Moon, but was a
personification of the same attributes operating in the terres-
trial elements only.

PLUTO AND SERAPIS IDENTICAL.

145. In the simplicity of the primitive religion, Pluto and

Proserpina were considered merely as the deities of death
presiding over the inferhal regions and, being thought wholly
;

inflexible and inexorable, were neither honored with any rites

of worship, nor addressed in any forms of supplication "' but ;

in the mystic system they acquired a more general character;

and became personifications of the
active and passive modifi-
cations of the pervading Spirit concentrated in the earth.
"^ LuciAN : De Dea Syria, § 4. standing in Greece, the armed image
" The Sidonians have another great of the goddess.
temple in Phoenicia, which, as they say, '" Plautus Curcullo, act i. scene
:

is of Astarte : but I think Astarte to 3. " Noctivigilia, noctiluca " —

watch-
be Selenaia or the Moon as some of
: ing by night, shining by night,
the priests assured me it was the temple '" Pausanias Eleans,\. 19, g i.
:

of Europa, the sister of Cadmus." — "* Strabo viii.:" Artemis borne

Europa, Astarte, Venus-Urania, the by a griffin."
Syrian, Phrygian, and Babylonian "' See Hunteriart Collection, coins
goddesses were but the same divm- ofTelos.
ity." "* Homer Iliad, ix. 158.
: Bry-
"' Pausanias : Corinth, iv. 7. "At ant's Translation :
the citadel of Corinth is a temple of " 'TIs Pluto, who is deaf to prayer
Aphrodite, and statues, representing And ne'er relents; and he of all the gods
the armed goddess, the Sun and Cupid Most hateful is to mortals."

with his bow." Pluto and Proserpina are invoked in

There was also at Cytherea, in the Iliad ix. and Odyssey x., but only as
most ancient temple of Venus-Urania rulers of the Underworld.

219
 I04 The Symbolical La7igtiage of

Pluto was represented with the polos or disk on his head, like
Venus and Isis, —
and, in the character of Serapis, with the
patera of libation, as distributor of the waters, in one hand
and the cornucopise, signifying its result, in the other. His
name Pluto or Pliitus signifies the same as this latter symbol,
and appears to have arisen from the mystic worship his ;

ancient title having been Aides or Afides, signifying the In-

visible, which the Attics corrupted to Hades. Whether the
title Serapis, which appears to be Egyptian, meant a more
general personification, or precisely the same, is difficult
to ascertain, ancient authority rather favoring the latter
supposition."" At the same time that there appears to be
some difference in the figures of them now extant; those
of Pluto having the hair hanging down in large masses
over the neck and forehead, and differing only in the front
curls from that of the celestial Jupiter; while Serapis has, in
some instances, long hair formally turned back and disposed
in ringlets hanging down upon his breast and shoulders like
that of women. His whole person too is always enveloped in
drapery reaching to his probably meant
feet ; wherefore he is

to comprehend the and to be a gen-

attributes of both sexes ;

eral personification, not unlike that of the Paphian Venus

with the beard, before mentioned, from which it was perhaps
partly taken "° there being no mention made of any such
;

deity in ^gypt prior to the Macedonian conquest and his ;

worship having been communicated to the Greeks by the

Ptolemies whose magnificence in constructing and adorning
;

his temple at Alexandria was only surpassed by that of the

Roman emperors in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.'"

THE LOTUS-SYMBOL.

The mystic symbol called a modius or polos, which is

146.
upon the heads of Pluto, Serapis, Venus, and Fortune or Isis,
appears to be no other than the bell or seed-vessel of the lotus
or water-lily, the Nymphaa nelumbo of Linnaeus. This plant
appears to be a native of the eastern parts of Asia, and is not

669 Plutarch and femafe below.

: Isis Osiris, 2S. Tfiey make her also
" They say that Serapis is no other sitting on horseback, or as Hippa."
than Pluto." Pausanias: Attica, xviii. 4. " There
'™ SumAS : Aphrodite. " They is a sanctuary of Serapis whom the
sculpture her (Aphrodite)
with a Athenians say was introduced as a
beard, and as having both male and deity by Ptolemy (Soter). Of the
female organs. They style her the temples of Serapis among the .(Egyp-
patroness of generation, and say that tians the most illustrious is at Alexan-
from above the hips she is male, and dria, the most ancient at Memphis."
'" Ammianus Marcellinus xxil:
 ^G^gvcjx^'^
^'J-^^m^l^ 'imi^^iit^: "e^m^'^^ jg^u^qng
Coins. Vaga, etc.
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 105

now found in iEgypt.'" It grows in the water, and amidst

its broad leaves, which float upon the surface, puts forth a
large white flower, the base and centre of which is shaped
like a bell or inverted cone, and punctuated on the top with
little cells or cavities, in which the seeds grow. The orifices
of these cells being too small to let them drop out when ripe,
they shoot forth into new plants in the places where they were
formed, the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish
them until they acquire a degree of magnitude sufficient to
burst it open and release themselves, when they sink to the
bottom, or take root wherever the current happens to deposit
them. Being, therefore, of a nature thus reproductive in itself,
and, as it were, of a viviparous species among plants, the
Nelumbo was naturally adopted as the symbol of the produc-
tive power of the waters, which spread life and vegetation over
the earth. It also appeared to have a peculiar sympathy with
the Sun, the great fountain of life and motion, by rising above
the waters as it rose above the horizon, and sinking under
them as it retired below.'" Accordingly we find it employed
in every part of the Northern hemisphere, where symbolical
worship either does or ever did prevail. The sacred images ot
the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians, are almost all placed upon
it '" and it is still sacred both in Thibet and China.'"
;
The
upper part of the base of the lingam also consists of the flower
of it blended with the more distinctive characteristic of the
female sex; in which that of the male is placed, in order to
complete this mystic symbol of the ancient religion of the
Brahmans; '" who, in their sacred writings, speak of Brahma
sitting upon his lotus throne.''"

iEGYPTlAN SCULPTURES, THEIR PERFECTION AND PRODIGIOUS

ANTIQUITY.

147. On the Isiac Tablet, the figures of Isis are represented

holding the stem of this plant, mounted by the seed-vessel, in
one hand, and the circle and cross before explained, in the
other and in a temple, delineated upon the same mystic tablet
;

are columns exactly resembling the plant, which Isis holds in

her hand, except that the stem is made proportionately large,
'•^'^
Embassy to China, vo\, \\. p. 391. ^^^ Embassy to Thibet, 'p.
H'i. Sir G,
"* Theophrastus : History of Staunton: Embassy to China, vol. ii.
Plants, iv. 10. p. 391.
See also Discourse on the Worship of ^^® SoNNERAT ; Voyage aux Indes,
Priapus, pp. 49, 50, 54, 58, and plate. etc.
'"See K^mpfer: D'Auteroche, '*''
Bhagavat-Cita,-p. 91. See also
SoNNERAT and The Asiatic Re- the figure of him by Sir William Jones,
searches. in the Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 243
io6 The Symbolical Language of

which is requisite to support a roof and

to give that stability
entablature. Columns and capitals of the same kind are still
existing in great numbers among the ruins of Thebes in
^gypt, and more particularly among those on the island of
Philse on the borders of Ethiopia which was anciently held ;

so sacred that none but priests were permitted to go upon it."'

These are probably the most ancient monuments of art
now extant at least, if we except some of the neighboring
;

temples of Thebes; both having been certainly erected when

that city was the seat of wealth and empire as it seems to ;

have been, even proverbially, in the time of the Trojan war.'™

How long it had then been so, we can form no conjecture;
but that it soon after declined, there can be little doubt for, ;

when the Greeks, in the reign of Psammetichus (generally

computed to have been about 530 years after, but probably
more) became personally acquainted with iEgypt,"" Memphis
had been for many ages its capital, and Thebes was in a man-
ner deserted.
148. We may therefore reasonably infer that the greatest
part of the superb edifices now remaining were executed or at
least begun before the Homeric or even Trojan times, many of
them being such as could not have been finished but in a long
course of years, even supposing the wealth and resources of
the ancient kings of iEgypt to have equalled that of the greatest
of the Roman emperors. The completion of Trajan's Column in
three years has been justly deemed a very extraordinary
effort; as there could not have been less than three hundred
sculptors employed; and yet at Thebes, the ruins of which,
according to Strabo, extended ten miles on both sides of the
Nile,"' we find whole temples and obelisks of enormous mag-
nitude covered with figures carved out of the hard and brittle
granite of the Libyan mountains, instead of the soft and 3'ield-
ing marbles of Faros and Carrara. To judge, too, of the mode
and degree of their finish by those on the obelisk of Rameses,
once a part of them, but now lying in fragments at Rome, they
are far more elaborately wrought than those of Trajan's Pillar.

CERTAIN ANTIQUITY OF ^GYPT.

149. The age of Rameses is as uncertain as all other very

"* DiODORUS SICULUS : i. 25. sis who died in the second year of the
"' Homer: Iliad, ix. 381. 63d Olympiad, in which Cambyses in-
™ DiODORUS SicuLus pp. 78,
: i. vaded Egypt.
79. " He (Psammetichus) first of the ''" Strabo : xvii. " And now ap-
kings, opened tlie eraporia of Egypt pear the ruins of enormous magnitudcj
to other nations, as another country." extending eighty stadia along."
This prhice was the fifth before Ama-
224
 Ancient Art and Mythology. J07

ancient dates: but he has been generally supposed by modern

chronologers to be the same person as Sesostris, and to have
reigned at Thebes about iifteen hundred years before the Chris-
tian era, or about three hundred before the siege of Troy. They
are, however, too apt to confound personages for the purpose of
contracting dates which being merely conjectural in events
;

of this remote antiquity, every new system-builder endeavors

to adapt them to his own prejudices and, as it has been the ;

fashion, in modern times, to reduce as much as possible the

limits of ancient history, whole reigns and even dynasties have
been annihilated with the dash of a pen, notwithstanding the
obstinate evidence of those stupendous monuments of art and
labor, which still stand up in their defense.'"
150. From the state in which the inhabitants have been
found in most newly-discovered countries, we know how slow
and difficult the invention of even the commonest implements
of art is and how reluctantly men are dragged into those
;

habits of industry, which even the first stages of culture re-

quire. .(Egypt, too, being periodically overflowed, much more
art and industry were required even to render it constantly
habitable and capable of cultivation, than would be employed
in cultivating a country not liable to inundations. Repositories
must have been formed, and places of safety built, both for men
and cattle; the adjoining deserts of Libya aflFording neither
food nor shelter for either. Before this could have been done,
not only the arts and implements necessary to do it must have
been invented, but the rights of property in some degree de-
fined and ascertained which they only could be in a regular
;

government, the slow result of the jarring interests and pas-

sions of men who, having long struggled with each other,
;

acquiesce at length in the sacrifice of some part of their

natural liberty in order to enjoy the rest with security. Such
a government, formed upon a very complicated and artificial
plan, does .^gypt appear to have possessed even in the days
of Abraham, not five hundred )'ears after the period generally
allowed for the universal deluge. Yet .^gypt was a new
country, gained gradually from the sea by the accumulation

'" Bishop Warburton, in \as Divine
Legation of Moses, \v2l?. xwixo^ViC^fi ow^
of these chronologers, who proves that
William I. the conqueror and William
III. of England are the same person.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson says: " The
original Sesostris was the first king of
the I2th dynasty. Osirtasen, or Ses-
ortasen I., who was the first great
Egyptian conqueror; but when Osirei,
225
or Sethi, and his son Remeses II. sur-
passed the exploits of their predeces-
sor, the name of Sesostris became con-
founded with that of Sethos, and the
conquests of that king and his still
greater son were ascribed to the origi-
nal Sesostris." This was before the
Hyk-Sos or Phoenicio-Hellenic Shep-
herds. — A. W.
io8 The Symbolical Language of

of the mud and sand annually brought down in the waters of

the Nile; and slowly transformed, by the regularly progres-
sive operation of time and labor, from an uninhabitable salt-
marsh to the most salubrious and fertile spot in the universe.
151. This great transformation took place, in all the lower
regions, after the genealogical records of the hereditary priests
of Amun at Thebes had commenced and, of course, after ;

the civil and religious constitution of the government had been

formed. It was the custom for every one of these priests to
erect a colossal statue of himself, in wood of which there —
were three hundred and forty-iive shown to Hecataeus and
Herodotus;"" so that, according to the ^gptian computation
of three generations to a century,'" which, considering the
health and longevity of that people,"' is by no means unrea-
sonable, this institution must have lasted between eleven and
twelve thousand years, from the times of the first king, Menes,
under whom all the country below Lake Mceris was a bog,"'
to that of the Persian invasion, when it was the garden of the
world. This is a period sufficient, but not more than suflBcient,
for the accomplishment of such vast revolutions, both natural
and artificial and, as it is supported'by such credible testimony,
;

there does not appear to be any solid room for suspecting it to

have been less for, as to the modern systems of chronology, de-
:

duced from doubtful passages of Scripture, and genealogies, of

which a great part were probably lost during the captivity of the
Jews, they bear nothing of the authority of the sacred sources
from which they have been drawn.'" Neither let it be ima-
'" Herodotus ii. 143.: isfactory than those of the Hebrew sa-
"i Herodotus ii. 142. " Three
: cred writings. Many of the numbers
generations of men make one hundred are peculiar and apparently mystical
years." rather than historical and it is plain
;

"' Herodotus : ii. 77. " Apart that discrepancies exist of a most in-
from any such precautions, they are, I comprehensible character, baffling
believe, next to the Libyans, the credulity. There are displayed in pe-
healthiest people in the world, an — riods of extraordinary brevity the ex-
effect of their climate, In my opinion, tremes of rustic simplicity and mature
which has no sudden changes. Dis- civilisation : and petty inaccuracies
ease almost always attacks men when denoting either carelessness in tran-
they are exposed to a change, and never scribing, or an allegorical sense which
more than during changes of the is now lost. Thus King Hezekiah at
weather." twenty-five succeeds his father who
'" Herodotus : ii. 4. " They died at thirty-six. Ahaziah at the age
told me that the first man who
ruled of forty-two is placed on the throne of
over Egypt was Men, and that in his his father who had just died at forty,
time all Egypt except the Thebaic There are no old Hebrew manuscripts
nome or canton was a marsh, none of the scriptures in existence ; the
of the land below Lake Mceris then books were collected by the Pharisee
showing itself above the surface of the Rabbis under the earlier Maccabees
water. This is a distance of seven and more or less revised, travestied and
days' sail from the sea up the river." amended. But all the early manu-
"' Few chronologies are more unsat- scripts have perished; and of those

226
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 109

gined that either Herodotus, or the priest who informed him,

cctuld have confounded symbolical figures with portraits for :

all the ancient artists, even those of ^gypt, were so accurate

in discriminating between ideal and real characters, that the
diflFerence is at once discernible by any experienced observer,
even in the wrecks and fragments of their works that are now
extant.

ANCIENT jEGYPTIANS OBTAINING THEIR SYMBOLS FROM INDIA.

152. But, remote as the antiquity of these .Egyptian re-

mains seems to be, the symbols which adorn them, appear not
to have been invented by that, but to have been copied from
those of some other people, who dwelt on the other side of the
Erythraean Ocean. Both the Nelumbo and the Hooded Snake,
which are among those most frequently repeated, and most
accurately represented upon all their sacred monuments, are, as
before observed, natives of the East and upon the very an-
;

cient .Egyptian temple, near Girjeh, figures have been ob-

served exactly resembling those of the Indian deities, Jugger-
naut, Ganesa, and Vishnu. The .Egyptian architecture appears,
however, to have been original and indigenous and in this art ;

only the Greeks seem to have borrowed from them the dif- ;

ferent orders being only different modifications of the symbol-

ical columns which the Egyptians formed in imitation of the
Nelumbo plant.

ARCHITECTURAL PILLARS DEVISED FROM THE LOTUS.

153. Theearliest capital seems to have been the bell or

seed-vessel, simply copied, without any alteration except a
little expansion at bottom, to give it stability. The leaves
of some other plant were then added to it, and varied in dif-
ferent capitals, according to the different meanings intended
to be signified by these accessory symbols."" The Greeks
decorated it in the same manner, with the foliage of various
plants, sometimes of the acanthus and sometimes of the
aquatic kind "° which are, however, generally so trans-
;

versions that exist there are disagree-
ments in the chronology. Ideler has
demonstrated that the years of the
world and the whole present chronolo-
gy of the Jews were invented by the
Rabbi Hillel Hanassi in the year 344.
None of the present Hebrew manu-
scripts are nine hundred years old. —
A. W.
227
"' Denon: pi. Ix. 12; pi. lix. and Ix.
"' See ib. pi. lix. i, 2, and 3, and Ix.
i, 2, 3, &c.; where the originals from
which the Greeks took their Corin-
thian capitals plainly appear. It
might have been more properly called
the Egyptian order, as far nt least as
relates to the form and decoration.*
of the capitals.
 no The Symbolical Language of

formed by their excessive attention to elegance, that it is

difficult to ascertain them. The most usual seems to be
the Egyptian Acacia, which was probably adopted as
a mys-
tic symbol for the same reasons as the olive; it being equally
remarkable for its powers of reproduction."" Theophras-
tus mentions a large wood of it in the Thebaid, where the
olive will not grow "' so that we may reasonably suppose
; to it.

have been employed by the ^Egyptians in the same symbolical

sense. From them the Greeks seem to have borrowed it about
the time of the Macedonian conquest it not occurring in any ;

of their buildings of a much earlier date and as for the :

story of the Corinthian architect, who is said to have invented

this kind of capital from observing a thorn growing round a
basket, it deserves no credit, being fully contradicted by the
buildings still remaining in Upper .^gypt.'"
154. The Doric column, which appears to have been the
only one known to the very ancient Greeks, was equally de-
rived from the Nelumbo its capital being the same seed-vessel
;

pressed flat, as it appears when withered and dry the only ;

state, probably, in which it had been seen in Europe. The

flutes in the shaft were made to hold spears and staffs whence ;

a spear-holder is spoken of, in the Odyssey, as part of a col-

umn.'" The triglyphs and blocks of the cornice were also
derived from utility they having been intended to represent
;

the projecting ends of the beams and rafters which formed the
roof
155. The Ionic capital has no bell, but volutes formed in
imitation of sea-shells, which have the same symbolical mean-
ing. To them is frequently added the ornament which archi-
tects call a honeysuckle but which seems to be meant for
;

the young petals of the same flower viewed horizontally, be-

fore they are opened or expanded. Another ornament is also
introduced in this capital, which they call eggs and anchors;
but which is, in fact, composed of eggs and spear-heads, the
symbols of female generative, and male destructive power or, ;

in the language of mythology, of Venus and Mars.

IMPOSSIBLE TO INVENT A NEW ORDER.

156. These are, in reality, all the Greek orders which are
'*" Martin On the Georgia of
: Vir- attributed, it must be of about the
gil, ii. 119. liundredth and eleventh Olympiad, or
'*'
Theophrastus : Concerning three hundied and thirty years before
Plants. the Christian era ;which is earlier
'*" the choragic monument of
If than any other specimen of Corinthian.
Lysicrates was really erected in the architecture known,
time of the Lysicrates to whom it is '"Homer: Odyssey, '\.se^t.\^i^|.
2J,S
Coins. Alexander II., etc.
 1;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 1 1

lespectively distinguished by the symbolical ornaments being

placed upward, downward, or sideways wherefore to invent :

a new order is as much impossible as to invent an attitude or

position, which shall incline to neither of the three. As for
the orders called Tuscan and composite, the one is that in
which there is no ornament whatsoever, and the other that in
which various ornaments are placed in diflferent directions;
so that the one is in reality no order, and the other a combina-
tion of several.
157. The columns being thus sacred symbols, the temples
themselves, of which they always formed the principal part,
were emblems of the Deity, signifying generally the female
productive power whence IIEPIKIUNI02, Ferikionios, sur-
;

rounded with columns, is among the Orphic or mystic epithets

of Bacchus, in his character of god of the waters '" and his ;

statue in that situation had the same meaning as the Indian

lingara, the bull in the labyrinth, and other symbolical com-
positions of the same kind before cited. A variety of acces-
sory symbols were almost always added, to enrich the sacred
edifices; the .^Egyptians covering the walls of the cells and the
shafts of the columns with them; while the Greeks, always
studious of elegance, employed them to decorate their entabla-
tures, pediments, doors, and pavements. The extremities of
the roofs were almost always adorned with a sort of scroll of
raised curves,"' the meaning of which would not be easily dis-
covered, were it not employed on coins evidently to represent
water not as a symbol, but as the rude effort of infant art,
;

feebly attempting to imitate waves.""

THE FISH-SYMBOL AND THE POMEGRANATE.

158. The most obvious, and consequently 'the most ancient

symbol of the productive power of the waters, was a fish
which we accordingly find the universal symbol upon many
of the earliest coins; almost every symbol of the male or
active power, both of generation and destruction, being occa-
sionally placed upon it and Derceto^ the goddess of the
;

Phoenicians, being represented by the head and body of a

woman, terminating below in a fish "' but on the Phoenician ;

584 Orphic Hymn, xlvi. was a strange representation half

;

^"Stuart : Athens, vol. I. iv. was a woman, and from the thighs to
plate 3. the extremities of the feet, it appeared
'"^ See coins of Tarentum, Cama- as the tail of a fish ; but in the Holy
rina, &c. City (Hierapolis, or Bambyke) it was
'*' LuciAN De Dea Syria, 14.
: entirely woman."
" The image of Derceto, in Phoenicia,
231
 2 ;

1 1 The Symbolical Language of

as well as Greek coins now extant, the personage is of the

other sex and in plate L. of vol. i of the Select Specimens, is
;

engraved a beautiful figure of the mystic Cupid, or first-be-

gotten Love, terminating in an aquatic plant; which, affording
more elegance and variety of form, was employed to signify the
same meaning; that is, the Spirit upon the waters; which is
otherwise expressed by a similar and more common mixed
figure, called a Triton, terminating in a fish, instead of an
aquatic plant. The head of Proserpina appears, in numberless
instances, surrounded by dolphins '" and upon the very an-
;

cient medals of Side in Pamphylia, the pomegranate, the fruit

peculiarly consecrated to her, is borne upon the back of one."'
By prevailing upon her to eat of it, Pluto is said to have pro-
cured her stay during half the year in the infernal regions
and a part of the Greek ceremony of marriage still consists,
in many places, in the bride's treading upon a pomegranate.
The flower of it is also occasionally employed as an ornament
upon the diadem of both Hercules and Bacchus, and likewise
forms the device of the Rhodian medals on some of which ;

we have seen distinctly represented an ear of barley springing

from one side of it, and the bulb of the lotus, or Nymphcea
nelumbo, from the other. It therefore holds the place of the
male, or active generative attribute and accordingly we find
;

it on a bronze fragment published by Caylus, as the result of the

union of the bull and lion, exactly as the more distinct symbol
of the phallus is in a similar fragment above cited."" The
pomegranate, therefore, in the hand of Proserpina or Juno,
signifies the same as the circle and cross, before explained,
in the hand of Isis; which is the reason why Pausanias declines
giving any explanation of it, lest it should lead him to divulge
any of the mystic secrets of his religion."' The cone of the

'**See coins of Syracuse, Motya, etc. Underworld, who is after all but Isis,
'" Hunterian Museum : Tab. xlix. Rhea, and Cybele. A. W.
'™ R^cueil iT Antiquities
—
6g. 3, etc. : Vol. VII.
See Ancient Faiths Em-
Inman . pi. Ixiii. figs. i. 2, 3.
bodied in Ancient Names, vol. ii. pp. Thebull's head here is half human-
611-613. The arcane meaning of the ised,having only the horns and ears
pomegranate is evidently sexual. The of the animal but in the more
;

goddess Nana ate of one, and became ancient fragment of Caylus, to which
pregnant. Women
celebrating the Mr. Knight refers, both symbols are
Thesmophoria, abstained from the unchanged.
fruit rigidly. The Greek name of '" Pausanias : Corinth, xvii. 4.
this fruit, rhoia, is a pun for Rhea, " The agalma of Hera is sitting upon
the Mother-Goddess. In the phallic a throne, and is of gold and ivory, the
symbolism, generation is a part of the work of Polycleitus ; her crown has
mystery of death, and therefore its inwrought upon it the Graces and the
symbol, the pomegranate, belongs very Hours in one hand she holds a
;

appropriately to the Queen of the pomegranate, and in the other, a

23-
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 113

which the thyrsus of Bacchus is always surmounted,

pine, with
and which is employed in various compositions, is probably a
symbol of similar import, and meaning the same, in the hand
of Ariadne and her attendants, as the above-mentioned em-
blems do in those of Juno, Proserpina, and Isis.°"

THE DOG-SYMBOL OF DIANA, THOTH, AND OTHER DEITIES.

159. Upon coins, Diana is often accompanied by a dog,"'

'"
esteemed to be the most sagacious and vigilant of animals
;

and therefore employed by the .Egyptians as the symbol of

Hermes, Mercury, or Anubis, who was the conductor of the
soul from one habitation to another and consequently the
;

same, in some respects, as Brimo, Hecate, or Diana, the de-

stroyer."' In monuments of Grecian art, the cock is the most
frequent symbol and in a small figure of brass, we have ob-
;

served him sitting on a rock, with a cock on his right side, the
goat on his left, and the tortoise at his feet. The ram, however,
is more commonly employed to accompany him, and in some

instances he appears sitting upon it "" hence it is probable

;

that both these animals signified nearly the same, or, at most,

sceptre ; concerning the pomegranate, Bacchus, as figured by

I willnot speak, for it is a matter per-
taining to the arcane learning of the
Mysteries."
The pomegranate was the symbol
of the Female Nature, and was named
Rhcea. Hera, or lady^ is a title not
only of Juno, but of Venus, Demeter,
Isis, and Athena. All these goddesses
were also styled Hippa, the ancient
personification of femininity. — A. W.
''''
Inman : Ancient Faiths Em-
bodied in Ancient Names, vol. ii. 490.
" In the previous volume (pp. go, 162,
527), when speaking of the so-called
Assyrian grove,' I stated my opinion
*
that the pine cone offered by priests to
the deity represented by that curiously-
shaped cut emblem, was typical of the
'
testis,' the analogue of the mundane
fice is offered is
the people of Lampsacus. On his
shoulder he bears a thyrsus, a wand or
virga, terminating in a pine cone, and
having two ribbons dangling from it.
We see, then, that amongst certain of
the ancients, the ass, the pine cone,
the basket, and the thyrsus were asso-
ciated with Bacchus, or the Solar deity
under the male emblem."
^®^ See coins of Syracuse, etc.
'" Plutarch Isis and Osiris,
: 11.
"They (the Egyptians) do not say
that the dog is the symbol of Her-
mes, but of the conservative, watch-
ful, philosophical principle of life."
Jacob Bryant declares that the
Greeks often mistook the term cohen
(priest) for kuon, a dog.
"' Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 44.
:

egg. The evidence upon which such " Anubis seems to me to have a power
assertion is founded may be shortly among the Egyptians much like that
summed up by reproducing a copy of of Hecate among the Greeks, he being
the ancient gem depicted by Moffat. terrestrial as well as Olympic. . . .

In this we notice the peculiar shape
of the altar, the triple pillar arising
from it, the ass's head, and fictile
offerings, the lad offering a pine
cone surrounded with leaves, and
carrying in his hand a basket in which
two phalli are distinctly to be recog-
nized. The deity to whom the sacri-
Those that worship the dog have a
certain secret meaning that must not
be revealed. In the more remote and
ancient times the dog had the highest
honor paid to him in Egypt."
'™ This is the case in an intaglio in
the Collection of the late Earl of
Carlile.

235
114 The Symbolical Language of

only different modifications of the influence of the nocturnal

sun, as the cock did that of the diurnal. Hence Mercury
appears to have been a personification of the power arising
from both; and we accordingly find that the old Pelasgian
Hermes, so generally worshipped at Athens,"' was a Priapic
figure,"' and probably the same personage as the Celtic Mer-
cury, who was the principal deity of the ancient Gauls °°° who ;

do not, however, appear to have had any statues of him till

they received them from the Greeks and Romans.
i6o. In these, one hand always holds a purse, to signify
that productive attribute which is peculiarly the result of
mental skill and sagacity,""" while the other holds the cadu-
ceus a symbol composed of the staff or sceptre of dominion
;

between two serpents, the emblems of life or preservation, and

therefore signifying his power over it. Hence it was always
borne by heralds; of whom Mercury, as the messenger of the
gods, was the patron, and whose office was to proclaim peace,
and denounce war; of both which it might be considered as
the symbol for the staff or spear, signifying power in gen-
:

eral,"' was employed by the Greeks and Romans to represent

Juno ""' and Mars °°' and received divine honors all over the
;

North, as well as the battle-axe and sword; by the latter of

which the God of War, the supreme deity of those fierce na-
tions, was signified; °°* whence, to swear by the shoulder of the

'" Pausanias : Messina, xxxiii. 87. " Why do they part the hair of
" The approved shape for the Hermaic women with a spear when they are
statues among the Athenians was married? Solution. Is it that most
. ,

square, and others copied from these."
"* Herodotus : ii.
mode of making the Hermaic statues,
with the aidoia erect, the Athenians
did not learn from the Egyptians, but
of these nuptial ceremonies relate to
51. "The Juno? For a spear is decreed sacred
to Juno, most of her statues are sup-
ported by a spear, and she is named
Quiritis and a spear of old was called
;

from the Pelasgians," quiris, wherefore they call Mars by the

Pausanias Bliac. ii. 16. " The
: name Quirinus."
Hermaic statue which they venerate "" Plutarch Romulus.
: " In
in Cyllene above other symbols, is an Rhegiura a spear was set up and
«rect phallus on a pedestal." worshipped as Ares, or Mars."
'" C^SAR : JVars, vi. '»< JusTiN History, xliii. 3. " From
:

""• Ammianus Marcellinus : xvi. the beginning, the ancients have wor-
5. " Occulte Mercurio supplicabat shipped spears as emblems of the im-
0ulianus) quem mundi velociorem mortal gods and hence, as a memorial
;

sensum esse, motum mentium susci-
tantem, theologiae prodidere doctrinae."
Inman : Ancient Faiths Embodied
in Ancient Names, i. p. 403. " Cis (i
Samuel, ix. i), also spelled KiSH
probably from D'3, chis, a purse or
bag,' an euphemism for the scrotum."
'"^ The expression, £t>0vv8iy dopi,
thus signifies to govern, and venire sub
hasta, to be sold as a slave.
"" Plutarch Roman Questions,
: (i Samuel, xxxi. 10), as before that the
of this worship, spears were set up by
the busts of the deities."
When Julius Cassar was fighting
among the Gauls, he lost his sword,
;
which the Gauls, on finding, placed in
'
a temple. He declined to take it
again after it had thus been conse-
crated. In like manner the Philis-
tines placed the weapons of King
Saul in the temple of Venus-Astarte

236
 yx-^

2"^ w

^-^

V-<.

^%.„
^f^.^

Mars. Ares.
 —

Ancient Art and Mythology. 115

horse and the edge of the sword, was the most solemn and in-
violable of oaths "" and the deciding of civil dissensions or per-
;

sonal disputes by duel, was considered as appealing directly

and immediately to the Deity. The ordeal, or trial by fire and
water, which seems once to have prevailed in Greece and
Italy,'"' as well as Germany and the North, is derived from the
same source; it being only an appeal to the essence, instead
of the symbol, of the Divine nature. The custom of swearing
by the implements of war as divine emblems, appears likewise
to have prevailed among the Greeks whence .^schylus intro- ;

duces the heroes of the Thebaid taking their military oath of

°"
fidelity to each other upon the point of a spear or sword.
161. The dog represented Thoth or Mercury as the keeper

sword of Goliath had also been conse- bodied in Ancient Names, ii. pp. 1 1 5,
crated "behind the ephod" by Ahim- 116, and 182-190. Ernest de BtJN-
elech, the high-priest of the Israelites (l SEN Keys of St. Peter, or, TJie
:

Samuel, xxi. 9). Herodotus also de- House of Rechab. HERODOTUS iv. :

clares that the Scythians erect an iron 62. LuciAN Scythia. :

*<" Mallet Introduction h tffis-

cimiter as the effigy of Mars, and offer :

to it more sacrifices than to all the toire de Danemarc, ix.

*"' Sophocles
other gods of the pantheon. The Antigonl, 270. :

Getse, Goths, Alans, and Sarmatians Virgil ^»«V, xi. 785-9.

:

also worshipped a sword, as Ammi- '•^

Summe Deum, sancti custos Soractis
anus Marcellinus declares (xxxi. 2) : Apollo,
" Their only idea of religion is to Quern primi coUmus, cui pineus ardor
acervo
plunge a naked sword into the ground, Pascitur ; et medium freti pietate per
with barbarous rites, and worship it ignem
Cultores multa premimus vestigia pruna."
as Mars." Attila, the King of the
'<" yEsCHYLUS : Seven
Huns, having by chance become pos- Chiefs against
sessed of a sword that had been con- Thebes, line 535.
secrated, was persuaded that it would " By his spear Amphion swears."
assure him the dominion of the Roman The oath by the weapon has been
empire, and victory in all his battles. common till a late day. The High-
David seems to have become possessed landers who served in the army of the
of a similar confidence when he re- Pretender, regarded it and the Sikhs, ;

ceived from the high-priest the sword Rajpoots, and other warlike tribes of
of Goliath. India preserve the custom even now.
The Romans adored Mars by the See Colonel Tod's celebrated work,
title of Quirinus, or spear-god, and Rajasthan, vol. i. p. 68 : " The Raj-
their own usual designation was Qui- poot worships his horse, liis sword, and
rites. the sun. . .. He swears by the
Inman suggests that the Kenites, or steel, and prostrates himself before
Cainites, mentioned in the Hebrew his defensive buckler, his lance, his
Scriptures, worshipped the lance ; one sword, or his dagger. The worship
meaning of their tribal name being of the sword in the Acropolis of
]'p,Kain, or the point of a spear. Moses Athens by the Getic Attila, with all
was an adopted member of their the accompaniments of pomp and
tribe David lived on amicable rela-
; place, forms an admirable episode in
tions with them (I Samuel, xxv. 29). the History of the Decline and Fall of
Jehu sought their countenance when Rome ; and had Gibbon witnessed the
he conspired against the royal family worship of the double-edged sword by
of Ahab (2 Kings, x. 15) they were
; the Prince of Mewar and all his
highly esteemed as scribes or hiero- chivalry, the historian might have em-
phants(l Chronicles, ii. 55); and Jere- bellished his animated account of the
miah predicted for them perpetuity of adoration of the cimiter, the symbol
race (ch. xxxv.). Ancient Faiths Em- of Mars."—A. W.
239
 6 . —

1 1 The Symbolical Language of

of the boundary between life and death, or the guardian of

the passage from the upper to the lower hemisphere to sig- :

nify the former of which, the face of Anubis was gilded, and
to signify the latter, black. °°' In the Greek and Roman statues
of him, the wings and fetasus, or cap, which he occasionally
wears upon his head, seem to indicate the same difference of
character; °°° similar caps being frequently upon the heads of
figures of Hephaistos or Vulcan, who was the personification
of terrestrial fire "° whence he was fabled to have been thrown
:

from heaven into the volcanic island of Lemnos, and to have

been saved by the sea; "" volcanoes being supported by water.
These caps, the form of which is derived from the e,^^^" and
which are worn by the Dioscuri, as before observed, surmount-
ed with asterisks, signify the hemispheres of the earth "' and ;

it is possible that the asterisks may, in this case, mean the

morning and evening stars; but whence the cap became a

distinction of rank, asit was among the Scythians,'" or a

symbol of freedom and emancipation, as it was among the

Greeks and Romans, is not easily ascertained.

BURNING AND EMBALMING OF THE DEAD.

162. The dog was the emblem of destruction as well as

vigilance, and sacred to Mars as well as Mercury "' whence :

the ancient Northern deity, Garmr, the ^if»(7z^r^r or engulfer, was

represented under the form of this animal; which sometimes
appears in the same character on monuments of Grecian art.'"
Both destruction and creation were, according: to the relisfious
philosophy of the ancients, merely dissolution and renovation ;

Apuleius The Golden Ass, xi.

608 :
Saved me, what time my shameless
" The dog raising his rough neck, his To
t,„ me from
"f.'^^I ^» for
f I was lame,
t
•
cast IrTr?"},'
her sight, 1
r 1 ^ 1 1. 1 t 1 1 1 J
face alternately black and golden, de- Then great had been my misery, had not
noted the messenger going hence and Eurynome and Thetis, in their laps,
thence between the Higher
^ and Infer- Daughter "f
S^'^^'^f'* ^.^ fell,-Eurynom8,
„ of billowy Ocean.'
pj

'"'
See small bronze coins of Meta- "" LuciAN : Dialogues of the Gods,
pont, silver tetradrachms of yEnos, etc. xxvi. "Like an egg divided and
"" See coins of Lipari, ^semia, etc. star above."
«" Homer Iliad, i. Bryant's :
*'" Sextus Empirica, : xi. 37.
Translation. " They placed upon them caps, and
" He seized me by the foot, and flung me 0° these, stars, denoting the hemis-
o er pheres.'
The^Jjattlements of Heaven. All day I
^ similar cap was given to the pic-
And with the setting sun I struck the '"'s of Ulysses, by Nicomachus, a
earth, painter of the period of Alexander.
In Lemnos. Little life was left in me
What time the Sintians took me from the PliNY *
xxxv '-,10
„id
r,*-7 , /^ ., •
ground." Filophonkoi, cap-wearers, Scytni-
AIso xviii • ^"^ °^ rank.
"» Phurnutus
—
LuciAN : Seythia.
«Ti,.
* 1 hen
/ \t. a goddess
ofc a truth jj •»!.• The Nature of the
:

Whom I
within
must ever honor and revere
is
;
r^
LrOas, xxl.
'

Who from the danger of my terrible fall *" See coins of Phocjea, etc.

240
 ; ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 117

which all sublunary bodies, even that of the Earth itself,

to
were supposed to be periodically liable.'" Fire and water
were held to be the great efficient principles of both and as ;

the spirit or vital principle of thought and mental perception

was alone supposed to be immortal and unchanged, the com-
plete dissolution of the body, which it animated, was conceived
to be the only means of its complete emancipation. Hence
the Greeks, and all the Scythian and Celtic nations, burned the
bodies of their dead, as the Hindus do at this day while the ;

Egyptians, among whom fuel was extremely scarce, embalmed

theirs, in order that they might be preserved entire to the uni-
versal conflagration; till which event the soul was supposed
to migrate from one body to another."" In this state those of
the common people were deposited in subterranean caverns,
excavated with vast labor for the purpose while the kings ;

erected, for their own bodies, those vast pyramidal monu-

ments (the symbols of that fire to which they were consigned),
whose excessive strength and solidity were well calculated to
secure them as long as the earth, upon which they stood, should
be able to support them."" The Great Pyramid, the only one

'" Strabo :
" They and others
iv. is followed by later authors, declares
(Celts) declare that the universe and that the Pyramids were designed for
human souls are indestructible ; but high altars and temples ; and were
to have been formerly overcome by constructed in honor of the Deity.
fire and vi'ater." See also Jt;sTlN: ii. Many have suppossed that they were
Mythology of the Eddas, iv. and xlviii. ;
designed for places of sepulture ; but
Voluspa, strophe xlix Vafthrud. ; it was usual for the Greeks to mistake
xlvii Plutarch, Cicero, etc. Some
; temples for tombs. The Great Pyra-
writers believed the world to have ex- mid contained a well and passages of
isted in its present condition, for an communications to other buildings
indefinite period. DiODORt;s Sicu- and near the pyramids are apartments
Lus i. 10. : of a wonderful fabric, which extend in
Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 47.
: length one thousand four hundred feet,
" Theopompus declares as the doctrine and about thirty in depth. They were
of the Magians, that the gods will cut out of the hard rock, and were
alternately conquer and again be sub- probably residences of the priests.
jected, for three thousand years, and The stone cofiin or trough was de-
that three thousand years more of con- signed for the holding of water, in
test, war, and destruction, will take which were placed lotos-flowers. Un-
place between them ; that in the end. doubtedly the lustrations and orgies
Hades (Ahriman) will be destroyed, of the gods were celebrated in these
and men made happy, in a state neither dark places. Many of the ancient
needing food nor casting a shadow." temples of Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and
This is the source of the ecclesiastical India were caverns in the rock, en-
tradition of six thousand years, on larged by art and cut into numerous
which so much stress has been laid by apartments. The Egyptians, from the
theological writers. top of the pyramids, observed the
Origen Against Celsus,
: iv. 20. heavens, and marked the constella-
" The Greeks alternated the periods tions ; and doubtless performed many
in which the earth will be purified by rites of worship. The structures de-
flood or fire." nominated Cyclopean appear to have
•'' Herodotus : ii. 123. been devised after the plan of caves,
'" Jacob Bryant, whose judgment indicating, perhaps, that the early

241
 8 — :

1 1 The Symbolical Langiiage of

that has been opened, was closed up with such extreme caie
and ingenuity that it required years of labor and enormous
expense to gratify the curiosity or disappoint the avarice of
the Mohammedan prince who first laid open the central cham-
ber where the body lay."° The rest are still impenetrable, and
will probably remain so, according to the intention of the
builders, to the last syllable of recorded time.

THE DIVINER HUMAN SOUL, OR NOUS.

163. The soul, that was to be finally emancipated by fire,

was the divine emanation, the vital spark of heavenly flame,
the principle of reason and perception, which was personified
into the familiardasmon or genius supposed to have the direc-
tion of each individual, and to dispose him to good or evil,
vifisdom or folly, with all their respective consequences of
prosperity and adversity.""' Hence proceeded the notion that
all human actions depended immediately upon the gods which ;

forms the fundamental principle of morality both in the elegant

and finished compositions of the most ancient Greek poets,""
and in the rude strains of the Northern Skalds i""^ for as the
soul was supposed to be a part of the aethereal substance of
the Deity detached from the rest, and doomed, for some un-
known causes, to remain during certain periods imprisoned in
matter, all its impulses, not immediately derived from the
materia organs, were of course impulses of the Deity."" As

population of those regions were cave- «'"

Homer : Iliad, iii. Priam says to
dwellers. See Analysis of Ancient Helen [Bryant's translation]:
Mythology, vol. v. p. 191, et ultra.— _
" I blame thee not
A. W. The blame is with the immortals who have
«™ Savary : Sur rEsrypte. „^ =«" ^ ., .
These pestilent
,
Greeks agamst me."
_
«''
Menander: "The mind {nous)
is our divinity." Agamemnon in like manner vindi-
"A divinity (demon) is placed with cates his conduct to Achilles, Id.xvL.:
every man to be his initiator into the u The Greeks speak
often of this feud, and
mysteries 01 liie he is good for no
; ; cast
divinity thinks ill, setting at nought The blame on me. Yet was I not the
the life of excellence god needs
the & "V.V.UI.
; n-.f*?"!^?' j c ^
But Jupiter, and Fate, and she . walks
j u who n
,, ., ,
.
J ,;
,
all things to be good. in darkness, dread Erynnis. It was they
Plutarch, who assigns two demons, Who filled my mind with fury in the hour
or genii, to each person, quotes Em- '*^''^° f"^"™ Achilles I bore off his prize."
pedocles in opposition to Menander ;
Pindar Pyth. v. 164. " The great
:

but the opinion of the latter is the mind of Zeus, who loveth men, dis-
most ancient and generally received. poseth for thee the Demon."
Sophocles says, "She called upon her Olympia xi. 41. " Men are good
:

demon." Trachineati Women, line and wise as the demon orders."

Qio. See Ovid : Fasti, vi. 5. «''>'
See Eddas, and Bartholinlts.
" A god is in us we glow with him ; Philolaus Pythagorica. " The
'''
:

impelling us the internal pressure

; ancient theologists and prophets tes-
has the seed of a sacred mind." tify that the soul, by way of penalty

242
Kore. Kybele.

Plouton etc.
 :

Ancient Art and Mythology. 119

the principles of tiiis system were explained in the Mysteries,

persons initiated were said to pass the rest of their time with
the gods '" as it was by initiation that they acquired a knowl-
;

edge of their affinity with the Deity; and learned to class

themselves with the more exalted emanations, that flowed from
the same source.
164.The corporeal residence of this divine particle or
emanation, as well as of the grosser principle of vital heat
and animal motion, was supposed to be the blood "" whence, ;

in Ulysses's evocation of the Dead, the shades are spoken of

as void of all perception of corporeal objects until they had
tasted the blood of the victims which he had offered by ™ ;

isjoined to the body, and is, so to way it is said, according to what is re-
speak, buried in tliis body." membered, that truly the soul thence-
Plutarch Discourse Coiueming
: forth is led by the gods."
the DcEmon of Socrates^ 24. *'
Tlie 626 Hippocrates : Diseases, i. 27.
deity converses immediately witii but " The blood in man contains the great-
a very few, and veiy seldom but to ; est part of the mind some say, all."
;

most he gives signs, from which the Hippocrates: Tie Heart, viii.
art of vaticination is derived. So that " The mind which was generated in
the gods control entirely the lives of the left ventricle of the heart of man,
very few, and of such only whom they and is the first principle of the soul
intend to raise to the highest degree it is nourished neither by food nor
of perfection and happiness. These drink by the belly, but by pure and
souls, as Hesiod declares, that are luminous ideas evolved from the secre-
liberated from the conditions of gen- tions of the blood."
erated existence, and in other respects Plutarch Symposiacs, viii. 10.
:

separated from the body, and free from " The blood, the
principal thing in the
earthly care, become demons, taking whole body, has both heat and the
care of other human beings. As ath- seminal moisture."
letes ceasing their exercises on ac- Leviticus, xvii. 14. " Ye shall eat
count of age, yet retain some love for the blood of no manner of flesh, for
their delight, to see others wrestle, the life (the soul) of all flesh is the
and encourage them, so souls having blood."
passed beyond the toils and conditions The heart as the receptacle of the
of the world-life, and are exalted into blood thus came, by figure of speech,
demons, do not slight the endeavors of to denote the person as to his moral
men, but are kindly disposed to those character and in the New Testament,
;

who are striving for the same end, and the evil acts denominated " works of
being emulous in some sort with the flesh" (Galatians, v. 19-21) are
them, they encourage and Work also spoken of as proceeding out of the
zealously with them when seeing heart {Mark, vii. 20-23). But in con-
them already near their hope and tradiction, the works of the spirit or
ready to grasp the prize." interior principle are described as good,
Plutarch : Consolatory Letter. and above law ; and persons born of
"As for what thou hearest others say, the spirit are declared to be unable to
who persuade the many that the soul, being born from above
sin, (1 John, iii.
when once freed from the body, g).— A. W.
neither suffers inconvenience nor evil, *" Homer : Odyssey, xi. " I be-
nor is conscious, I know that thou hold the soul of my deceased mother,
art better grounded in the doctrines sitting near the blood in silence nor ;

received by us from our ancestors, and does she dare look upon her son, as to
in the sacred orgies of Dionysus, than speak. ... I remained till my moth-
to believe them for the mystic sym-
; er came and drank of the blood then ;

bols are well known to us who belong immediately she knew me and lament-
to the Brotherhood." ing addressed me."
'" Plato Phadrus. " In the same
:

245
 "

I20 The Symbolical Language of

means of which their faculties were replenished by a reunion

with that principle of vitality from which they had been sep-
arated; for, according to this ancient system, there were two
souls, the one the principle of thought and perception, called
noos and phreti, and the other the mere power of animal
motion and sensation, called Jisuche'^' both of which were
allowed to remain entire, in the shades, in the person of
Tiresias only/" The prophetess of Argos, in like manner,
became possessed of the knowledge of futurity by tasting the
blood of a lamb offered in sacrifice "° and it seems probable ;

that the sanctity anciently attributed to red or purple color,

arose from its similitude to that of blood as it had been cus- ;

tomary, in early times, not only to paint the faces of the statues
of the deities with vermilion, but also the bodies of the Roman
Consuls and Dictators,"' during the sacred ceremony of the
triumph; from which ancient custom the imperial purple of
later ages is derived.
165. It was, perhaps, in allusion to the emancipation and
purification of the soul, that Bacchus is called Liknites '" a ;

metophorical title taken from the winnow, which purified the

corn from the dust and chaff, as fire was supposed to purify the
aethereal soul from all gross and terrestrial matter. Hence this
instrument is called by Virgil the mystic winnow of Bacchus; "'
and nence we find the symbols both of the destroying and
generative attributes upon tombs, signifying the separation

'*' Orphica. " The father of gods tores Verrius, quibus credere sit ne-
and men placed us, the mind [nous] cesse, Jovis ipsius simulachri faciem
in the soul, and the soul in the sluggish diebus festis minio illini solitam, tri-
body." umphantumque corpora : sic Camillum
Gesner : J\ri!te " Ac-
on Orphica. triumphasse."
cording to this philosophy, the fsuche "*' Orph. Hymn., xlv. The XiKVOV,
is the soul, or oKJOTa, by which animate however, was the mystic sieve in
thingslive, breathe, and are sustained ; which Bacchus was cradled; from
the nous is the mind, the something which the title may have been derived,
more divine, added or placed in cer- though the form of it implies an active
tain souls by deity." rather than a passive sense. See He-
629 Homer Odyssey, x. 491. " You
: SYCH. in voc.
'^' VlRGH
must come to the abode oi^ Pluto and Georges, i. 166. " Mys-
:

awful Persephoneia, to consult the tica vannus lacchi.

.soul of Theban Tiresias, the blind Osiris has the winnow in one hand,
prophet, whose mental powers (p/ire- and the hook of attraction in the
nis) are stable; to whom, now dead, other; which are more distinctly ex-
Persephoneia has given mind (nous), pressed in the large bronze figure of
that he may be truly wise." him engraved in pi. ii. of vol. i. of the
'™ PausaniAS ii. 3, 4. : Select Specimens, than in any other we
•'' Plutarch Concerning the Ro-
: know. Even in the common small fig-
mans. " Speedily blossoms the red ures it is strange that it should ever
(milthinon) with which they anointed have been taken for a whip though it ;

the ancient statues." might reasonably have been taken for

WlNKELMAN : History of Arts, i. 2. a flail, had the ancients used such an
Puny; xxxiii. 7. " Enumerat auc- instrument in thrashing corn.

246
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 121

and regeneration of the soul performed by the same power.

Those of the latter are, in many instances, represented by very
obscene and licentious actions, even upon sepulchral monu-
ments as appears from many now extant, particularly one
;

lately in the Farnese Palace at Rome. The Canobus of the

.Egyptians appears to have been a personification of the same
attribute as the Bacchus Liknites of the Greeks for he was :

represented by the filtering-vase, which is still employed to

purify and render potable the waters of the Nile; and these
waters, as before observed, were called the outflowing of Osiris,
of whom the soul was supposed to be an emanation. The
means, therefore, by which they were purified from all grosser
matter, might properly be employed as the symbol of that
power, which separated the sethereal from the terrestrial soul,
and purified it from all the pollutions and encumbrances ot
corporeal substance. The absurd tale of Canobus being the
deified pilot of Menelaus is an invention of the later Greeks,
unworthy of any serious notice.

SACRED PURIFICATION BY WATER AND FIRE.

166. The rite of Ablution or Baptism in fire and water, so

generally practiced among almost all nations of antiquity,
seems to have been a mystic representation of this purification
and regeneration of the soul after death. It was performed by
jumping three times through the flame of a sacred fire, and
being sprinkled with water from a branch of laurel; "" or else
by being bedewed with the vapor from a sacred brand, taken
flaming from the altar and dipped in water."" The exile at his
return, and the bride at her marriage, went through ceremo-
nies of this kind to signify their purification and regeneration
for a new life "° and they appear to have been commonly
;

practiced as modes of expiation or extenuation for private or

secret offenses.'" A
solemn ablution, too, always preceded in-
and Eleusinian mysteries;"" and
itiation into the .(Egyptian
when a Jewish proselyte was admitted, he was immersed in the
presence of three witnesses, after being circumcised, but before
he was allowed to make the oblation by which he professed

"' Ovid : Fasti, iv. er. Apollodorus Bibliotheca, i. 5, g

:

Cerle ego transilui positas ter in ordine 2. "Desiring make

the infant im-
to
flamflias, ^ mortal, she placed him in the fire of
Virgaquerorataslaureamisit aquas.
„;g^j^ ^,,^ ^_^ ^^^^ j^j, ^^^.^^
636 ATHEN.EUS : ix. flesh."
686 Plutarch Roman Questions, i.
: 637
Qvid Fasti, v. 2.
:

"Is it because fire refines and water "^AruLEius: hu Golden Ass, xi.
eleanseth, and a married woman ought Diodorus Siculus i. :

to remain pure and chaste ?"

247
 ' :

122 The Symbolical Language of

himself a subject of the true God. As this ceremony was sup-

posed to wash off all stains of idolatry, the person immersed
'was said to be regenerated and animated with a new soul; to
preserve which in purity, he abandoned every former connec-
tion of country, relation, or friend.""
by fire is still in use among the Hindus,
167. Purification
as was among the earliest Romans,"" and also among the
it

native Irish; men, women, and children, and even cattle, in

Ireland, leaping over, or passing through the sacred bonfires
annually kindled in honor of Baal "' an ancient title of the ;

Sun, which seems to have prevailed in the Northern as well as

Eastern dialects; whence arose the compound titles of the
Scandinavian deities, Baldur, Habaldur, etc., expressing differ-
ent personified attributes."" This rite was probably the abom-
ination, so severely reprobated by the sacred historians of the
J ews, of parents making their sons and daughters pass through the fire:
for, in India, it is still performed by mothers passing through
the flames with their children in their arms;"' and though
commentators have construed the expression in the Bible to
mean the burning of them alive, as offerings to Baal or Moloch,
it is more consonant to reason, as well as to history, to sup-

pose that it alluded to this more innocent mode of purification

and consecration to the Deity, which continued in use among
the ancient inhabitants of Italy to the later periods of Heathen-
ism when it was performed exactly as it is now in Ireland,
;

and held to be a holy and mystic means of communion with

the great active principle of the universe.""

'" Marsham : Canon Chronicum, An, quia cunctarum contraria semina re-
TMra.
ix Iq2
flirt T-i' TT Sunt duo, discordes iafnis et unda dei
«*> DIONYSIUS OF HalICARNASSUS : Junxerunt elementa patres: aptumque pu-
Roman Aiitiquities, Ixxxviii. " Romu- tarunt
lus commanded fires to be built by the ,
Ignibug, et sparsa tangere corpus aqua?
*„ . J J .u An, quod in his vitEe caussa est^ haec per-
m.^., ^^i
people ^to pass
;
tents and caused tlie 1
diditexul:
>- ,

through the fires for the purification His nova fit conjux : hsec duo magna pu-
of their bodies." '^°'
'" Collecian. de reb. Hibernic. No. v. This is probably the construction
p. 64. that ought usually to be given, Ahaz
"' Olaus RUDBECKius: Atlant.'?. and Man.isseh made their sons pass
ii. V. p. 140. through the fire to Moloch-Hercules ;

«J3
Ayeen Akberry, and Maurice's but the former is also said to have
Antiquities of India, vol. v. p, 1075. " burnt his children in the fire," while
"* Ovid : Fast. iv. 781. the latter " shed innocent blood very

»°n5^^„<f
"'' , ,

''''^ """"'""'
. . much, till he had filled Jerusalem
f'-om one end to the other." The
Trajicias celeri strenua membra pede. prophet J eremiah also asserted that
Expositus mos est moris mihi restat origo.
: the kinirs of Tudah had built the high
'*"'''""= <:a=P'='q"= nostra
tenet.''"'"
pj^^^^ ^^ jjaal to burn their sons with
Omnia piirgat edax ignis, vitiumque metal- fire for burnt-offerings to Baal, and
lis. filled the valley of Gehenna or Tophet
Excoquit : idolrco cum duce purgat oves.
^^1^,^ ^jg .^-^^^^ ^f innocents.—A. W.

248
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 123

HUMAN SACRIFICES, AND THE MYSTIC BAPTISM OF BLOOD.

168. It must, however, be admitted that the Carthaginians

and other nations of antiquity did occasionally sacrifice their
children to their gods, in the most cruel and barbarous man-
ner and, indeed, there is scarcely any people whose history
;

does not afford some instances of such abominable rites. Even

the patriarch Abraham, when ordered to sacrifice his only son,
does not appear to have been surprised or startled at it neither ;

could Jephthah have had any notion that such sacrifices were
odious or even unacceptable to the Deity, or he would not have
considered his daughter as included in his general vow, or im-
agined that a breach of it in such an instance could be a
greater crime than fulfilling it. Another mode of mystic puri-
fication was the Taurobolium, ^gobolium, or Criobolium of the
Mithraic rites which preceded Christianity but a short time
;

in the Roman empire, and spread and flourished with it. The
catechumen was placed in a pit covered with perforated boards
upon which the victim, whether a bull, a goat, or a ram, was
sacrificed so as to bathe him in the blood which flowed from it.
To this the compositions, so frequent in the sculptures of fhe
third and fourth centuries, of Mithras the Persian Mediator, or
his female personification, a winged Victory sacrificing a bull,
seems to allude °" but all that we have seen, are of late date,
:

except a single instance of the Criobolium or Victory sacrific-

ing a ram, on a gold coin of Abydos.

THE TWO HUMAN SOULS ONE ETHEREAL OR NOETIC, THE OTHER

TERRESTRIAL.

169. The celestial or sethereal soul was represented in sym-

bolical writing by the psychl or butterfly an insect which
;

appears from the egg in the shape of a grub, crawling

first

upon the earth, and feeding upon the leaves of plants. In

this state it was aptly made an emblem of man in his earthly

form; when the aethereal vigor and activity of the celestial

soul, the divines particula mentis, was clogged and encumbered
with the material body. In its next state, the grub becoming
a chrysalis appeared, by its stillness, torpor, and insensibility,
a natural image of death, or the intermediate state between
the cessation of the vital functions of the body, and the eman-

"' See Bassi-relievi, di Roma, tav. which appears anterior to the Mace-
Iviii.-lx. There was one of these in donian conquest,
the cabinet of Mr. R. Payne Knight,

251
 124 -^'^^^ Symbolical Language of

cipation of the soul in the funeral pile and the butterfly:

breaking from this torpid chrysalis, and mounting in the air,

afforded a no less natural image of the celestial soul bursting
from the restraints of matter, and mixing again with its native
aether. Like other animal symbols, it was by degrees melted
into the human form the original wings only being retained,
;

to mark its meaning. So elegant an allegory would naturally

be a favorite subject of art among a refined and ingenious
people and it accordingly appears to have been more diver-
;

sified and repeated by the Greek sculptors, than almost any

other, which the system of emanation, so favorable to art,
could afford."' Being, however, a subject more applicable
and interesting to individuals than communities, there is no
trace of it upon any coin, though it so constantly occurs upon
gems.
170. The fate of the umbra, shade, or terrestrial soul, the
region to which it retired at the dissolution of the body, and
the degree of sensibility which it continued to enjoy, are sub-
jects of much obscurity, and seemed to have belonged to the
poetry, rather than to the religion, of the ancients. In the
Odyssey it is allowed a mere miserable existence in the dark-
ness of the polar regions, without any reward for virtue or
punishment for vice the punishments described being evi-
;

dently allegorical, and perhaps of a diflFerent, though not infe-

rior author. The mystic system does not appear to have been
then known to the Greeks, who caught glimmering lights
and made up incoherent fables from various sources.
Pindar, who is more systematic and consistent in his mythology
than any other poet, speaks distinctly of rewards and punish-
ments the latter of which he places in the central cavities of
;

the earth, and the former in the remote islands of the Ocean,
on the other side of the globe, to which none were admitted,
but souls that had transmigrated three times into different
bodies, and lived piously in each after which they were to
;

enjoy undisturbed happiness in the state of ultimate bliss,

under the mild rule of Rhadamanthus, the associate of
Kronos.'" A similar region of bliss in the extremities of the

"' This was an example of the because the word cohen sounds like
punning so common in those times, HVtov. The term psyche, or soul, also
often making us uncertain whether the signifies a butterflymelitta, a bee, is
;

accident of similar name or sound led the name of Mylitta, or Venus. The
to adoption as a symbol or was ivy or kisses was devoted to Bacchus
merely a blunder. Thus the Greeks as the Kissean or Cushite deity. A. —
styled a certain goddess a mare, be- W.
cause she was termed Hippa ; and de- «•"
Olympiodorus : ii. 108-123, etc.
scribed the priests of Egypt as dogs,

252
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 125

earth is spoken of in the Odyssey ; but not as the retreat of the

dead, but a country which Menelaus was to visit while liv-

ing.'" Virgil has made up a mixture of fable and allegory,
by bringing the regions of recompense, as well as those of
punishment, into the centre of the earth and then giving ;

them the aethereal light of the celestial luminaries,'" without

which even his powers of description could not have embel-
lished them to suit their purpose. He has, also, after Plat 0,°°
joined Tartarus to them, though it was not part of the regions
regularly allotted to the dead by the ancient Greek mytholo-
gists, but a distinct and separate world beyond Chaos, as far
from Earth, as Earth from Heaven.'" According to another
poetical idea, the higher parts of the sublunary regions were
appropriated to the future residence of the souls of the great
and good, who alone seemed deserving of immortality.'"
171. Opinions so vague and fluctuating had of course but
little energy and accordingly we never find either the hope
;

of reward, or the fear of punishment after death, seriously em-

ployed by the Greek and Roman moralists as reasonable mo-
tives for human actions or considered any otherwise than as
:

matters of pleasing speculation or flattering error.'" Among

the barbarians of the North, however, the case was very dif-
ferent. They all implicitly believed that their valor in this
life was to be rewarded in the next, with what they conceived
to be the most exquisite of all possible enjoyments. Every
morning they were to fight a great and promiscuous battle ;

after which Odin was to restore the killed and wounded to

their former strength and vigor, and provide a sumptuous
entertainment for them in his hall, where they were to feed
upon the flesh of a wild boar, and drink mead and ale out of
"* Homer Odyssey, iv. 561.
:
" But With iron gates and threshold forged of
for thee. Oh noble Menelaus, it
not is
^s faTbeneath the shades as earth from
decreed by the gods to die but the ; heaven."
immortals will send you to the Elysian Milton's Hell is taken from the
plain, and the houndanes of the earth, Tartarus of Hesiod, or whoever was
where is auburn-haired Rhadamanthus, (he author of the Theogony which
. .because you possess Helen, and
.
tears his name. His descriptions of
are the son-in-law of Zeus." chaos are also drawn from the same
"» Virgil Mneid, vi. " Solemque
:
source,
suum, sua sidera notunt." 66s
Lucan ; Pharsalia, ix. 5.
«" Plato
Phcedrus.
:
'
Qua niger astriferis connectitur axibus
•"Hesiod: Theogony. "Beyond aSr,
dark chaos." Quodque patet terras inter lunseque mea-
Homer: Iliad, viii. [Bryant's trans- gemidei manes habitant, quos ignea vir-
lationj : tus
..f^, _.,, , . . , Innocuos vitae patientes setheris imi
„. „ , down,
Or I wiU seize and hurl pg^jt gt letemos animam coUegit in or-
The offender to rayless Tartarus, ^cs "
Deep, deep in the great gulf below the .,„ , '
„ . .. ,
earth, ""Juvenal: Satire, u. 149 ; Lu-
can Pharsalia, i. 458.
:

253
126 The Symbolical Language of

horns of stags till night,when they were to be indulged with

beautiful women."' Mankind in general in all stages of
society are apt to fashion their belief to their dispositions,
and thus to make their religion a stimulus instead of a curb
to their passions.

HERMES OR MERCURY, AND VULCAN THE FIRE-GOD.

172. fire was supposed to be the medium through which

As
the soul passed from one state to another, Hermes or
Mercury, the conductor, was nearly related to Hephaistos or
Vulcan, the general personification of that element. The
.^Egyptians called him his son "' and the Greeks, in some
;

instances, represented him not only with the same cap, but also
with the same features, and that they are only to be distin-
guished by the adscititious symbols."" He had also, for the
same reason, a near affinity with Hercules, considered as the
personification of the diurnal sun wherefore they were :

not only worshipped together in the same temple,'" but

blended into the same figure, called a. Herm-Heracles from hav-
ing the characteristic forms or symbols of both mixed.""
173. As the operations of both art and nature were sup-
posed to be equally carried on by means of fire, Vulcan is
spoken of by the poets, sometimes as the husband of Charis or
Elegance,"" and sometimes of Venus or Nature °°° the first of ;

which appears to have been his character in the primary, and

the second in the mystic or philosophical religion of the
Greeks for the whole of the song of Demodocus in the
:

Oftyssey, here alluded to, is an interpolation of a much later

date;""' and the story which it contains, of Vulcan detecting
Mars and Venus, and confining them in invisible chains, evi-
dently a mystic allegory, signifying the male and female powers
of destruction and generation fixed in their mutual operation by the
invisible exertions of the universal agent, fire. It was probably
composed as a hymn to Vulcan, and inserted by some rhapso-
dist, who did not understand the character of the Homeric
language, with which the Attic contraction Helios for Eelios is
utterly incompatible.

*" Mallet : Introd. i IHistoire de *'* Cicero: Ad Atticum, i. 10.

Danemarc. ^" Homer : Iliad, xviii. [Bryant's
™ Syncellus : C/^m^. p. 124. translation]:
"'See coins of /Esernia, Lipara, " Charis of the snowy vail,
etc. The beautiful, whom the great god of fire
»" Pausanias The temple com-
: " Had made his wife."

men to Hercules and Hermes by the '''•''

Homer : Odyssey, viii. line 266.
stadium." "" Odyssey, viii. 266-369.

254
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 127

174. The Egyptian worship, being under the direction of

a permanent Hierarchy, was more fixed and systematic than
that of the Greeks; though, owing to its early subversion, we
have less knowledge of it. Hence the different personifica-
tions of fire were by them more accurately discriminated
Phtha, whom the Greeks call Hephaistos, and the Romans Vul-
can, being the primitive universal element, or principle of life
and motion in matter Anubis, whom they call Hermes and
;

Mercury, the Minister of Fate; and Thoth, whom they called

by the same titles, the parents of Arts and Sciences. Phtha was
said to be the father of all their Cabeiri or chief gods '" and
;

his name signified the Ordinator or Regulator, as it does still in

the modern Coptic. His statues were represented lame, to
signify that fire acts not alone, but requires the sustenance of
some extraneous matter ;"" and he was fabled by the Greek
mythologists to have delivered Minerva from the head of
Jupiter that is, to have been the means by which the wisdom
;

of the omnipotent Father, the pure emanation of the Divine

Mind, was brought into action.

ATHENA OR MINERVA, THE DIVINE WISDOM, AND HER SYMBOLS.

175. This pure emanation, which the .^Egyptians called

Neith,"* was considered as the goddess both of Force and Wis-
dom, the first in rank of the secondary deities,'" and the only
one endowed with all the attributes of the supreme Deity; °"
for as wisdom is the most exalted quality of the mind, and the
Divine Mind the perfection of wisdom, all its attributes are
the attributes of wisdom under whose direction its power is
;

always exerted. Force and wisdom, therefore, when consid-

ered as attributes of the Deity, are the same and Bellona ;

and AthenS are but different titles for one personification.

*'' Herodotus
: iii. 37. Gardner "' Jablonski : Pantheon of jEgypt,
Wilkinson doubts the accuracy of this Book I. ii. 11, 13.
statement, but his remarks are not *" PLATO : Timaus. " Sal's had a
clear. Their worship was very ancient presiding divinity whose name is in the
in Phrygia and Samothrace, also in Egyptian tongue, Neith, which they
Lemnos and Tenedos ; in short, say corresponds with the Greek Athe-
wherever Vulcan or Hephaistos was ne." The name more clearly re-
worshipped. According to Jacob Bry- sembles that of the Armenian goddess
ant, they were the priests of the Mo- Anaitis, or Ana-hid, the Heavenly
ther Goddess. The Scholiast in Ap- —
Venus. A. W.
ollonius declares that " Zeus is the *'' Horace : i. Ode 12. " Pallas
older of the Cabeiri." As Hephaistos received the honors next to him."
was the Phtha of Egypt, it is possible "' Callimachus : T/te Bath of
that he was their father in the sense in Athena. " Zeus gave to Athenaia
which he is denominated father of all alone of his daughters to bear the pa-
the gods. —A. W. ternal honors."

259
 ;

128 The Symbolical Language of

Both the Greeks and Egyptians considered her as male and

female °" and upon monuments of art still extant, or accu-
;

rately recorded, she is represented with almost every symbol

of almost every attribute, whether of creation, preservation,
or destruction.'"
176. Before the human form was adopted, her proper sym-
bol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other
creatures in acuteness and refinement of organic perception;
its eye being calculated to discern objects, which to all others
are enveloped in darkness its ear to hear sounds distinctly,
;

when no other can perceive them at all and its nostrils to ;

discriminate effluvia with such nicety, that it has been deemed

prophetic from discovering the putridity of death, even in the
first stages of disease.'" On some very ancient Phoenician
coins, we find the owl with the hook of attraction and winnow
of separation under its wing to show the dominion of Divine
Wisdom over both while on the reverse is represented the
;

result of this dominion, in the symbolical composition of a

male figure holding a bow in his hand, sitting upon the back
of a winged horse terminating in the tail of a dolphin
beneath which are waves and another fish.'" A similar mean-
ing was vailed under the fable of Athene or Minerva putting
the bridle into the mouth of Pegasus,"" or Divine Wisdom
controlling and regulating the waters when endued with mo-
tion and vitality.
177. The Egyptians
are said to have represented the per-
vading Spirit or ruling providence of the Deity by the Scara-
baeus or black beetle, which frequents the shores of the
Mediterranean Sea, and which some have supposed to be
an emblem of the Sun.'" It occurs very frequently upon
Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan, as well as .^Egyptian sculp-
tures; and is sometimes with the owl, and sometimes with
the head of Minerva, upon the small brass coins of Athens.
It is of the androgynous class, and lays its eggs in a ball of
dung or other fermentable matter which it had previously
collected, and rolled backward and forward upon the sand
•*' Orphic Hymn to Athena, " Born
In the medals of Athens almost
male and female." every symbol accompanies the owl.
«"• Pausanias
I. xxiv.
: Her statue *" Of this we have known instan-
by Pheidias at Athens, held a spear in ces, in which the nocturnal clamors of
one hand, and near by was her Ser- the screech-owl have really foretold
pent. There was also a serpent kept death, according to the vulgar notion,
in her temple at the Acropolis. See "» See Dutens : M^dailUs Ph/nic.
Aristophanes : Lysistraius. pi. i. v. i.

Pausanias : Attica, xxiii. 5. " The *" Pausanias : II. ir.

statuecf Athena was also denominated •" Horapoll. : i. 10.
that of Hygeia."

260
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 129

of the sea, untilit acquired the proper form and consistency

after which it buries it in the sand, where the joint operation

of heat and moisture matures and vivifies the germs into new
insects.'" As a symbol, therefore, of the Deity, it might
naturally have been employed to signify the attribute of
Divine Wisdom, or ruling Providence, which directs, regu-
lates, and employs the productive powers of nature.
178. When the animal symbols were changed for the
human, Athene or Minerva was represented under the form of
a robust female figure, with a severe, but elegant and intelli-
gent countenance, and armed with a helmet, shield, and breast-
plate, the emblems of perservation and most frequently ;

with a spear, the emblem, as well as the instrument, of destruc-

tion. The helmet is usually decorated with some animal
symbol such as the owl, the serpent, the ram, the grifiSn, or
;

the sphinx which is a species of griflBn, having the head

;

of the female personification, instead of that of the eagle,

upon the body of the lion. Another kind of griflSn, not
unfrequent upon the helmets of Minerva, is composed of the
eagle and horse,"* signifying the dominion of water instead of
fire whence came the symbol of the flying horse, already
:

noticed. In other instances the female head and breast of

the sphinx are joined to the body of a horse; which in these
compositions is always a male, as well as that of the lion in
the sphinx so as to comprehend the attributes of both sexes.'"
;

In the stand of a mirror of very ancient sculpture belonging

to Mr. Payne Knight is a figure of Isis upon the back of a
monkey with a sphinx on each side of her head, and another
in her hand. This is a compound symbol of the same kind as
the Chimsera and others before noticed. The monkey very
rarely occurs in Greek sculptures, but was a sacred animal
among the .Egyptians, as it still continues to be in some parts
of Tartary and India ; but on account of what real or imagi-
nary property is now uncertain.'"
'" Plutarch Ins and Osiris, 74.
:
»" Herodotus : ii. 175. " A
man
" There are many that to this day be- presented to the temple a number of
lieve that the beetle kind (scaraiaus) large colossal statues, and several pro-
hath no female, but that the males digious andro-sphinxes."
cast out their sperm into a round pel- ''" An
engraving copied from an an-
let of earth, which they roll about by cient gemor amulet, discovered in
thrusting it backward with their hinder France, has a priapic figure of Zeus
—
part and this in imitation of the Sun or Jupiter with the chlamys hanging
which while it moves from west to from his shoulder standing beside the
east, turns the heaven the contrary Tree of Knowledge, and on the other
way." side Pallas-Athene in full armor. The
Clement OF Alexandria: Mis- animals peculiar to each, are near them;
cellanies, v. 4. the ram by Jupiter, and the serpent at
*'* See Medals of Velia, etc. the feet of the" goddess. Around the

263
130 The Symbolical Language of

THE iEGIS, OR GOAT-SKIN SYMBOL.

179. The cegis or breast-plate of Minerva is, as the name

indicates, the goat-skin, the symbol of the productive power,
fabled to have been taken from the goat which suckled
Jupiter; that is, from the great nutritive principle of nature.
It is always surrounded with serpents, and generally covered
with plumage; and in the centre of it is the Gorgon or
Medusa, which appears to have been a symbol of the Moon,"'
exhibited sometimes with the character and expression of the
destroying, and sometimes with those of the generative or
preserving attribute the former of which is expressed by the
;

title of Gorgon, and the latter by that of Medusa."' It is

sometimes represented with serpents, and sometimes with fish,

in the hair; and occasionally with almost every symbol of the
female generative or productive power it being the female ;

personification of the Disk, by which almost all the nations

of antiquity represented the Sun "' and the female personifi-
;

cation was the symbol of the Moon. Among the Romans,

the golden bulla or disk was worn by the young men, and the
crescent by the women, as it still is in the South of Italy; and
it seems that the same symbolical amulets were in use among

the ancient inhabitants of the British Islands several of both ;

having been found made of thin beaten gold both in England

and Ireland which were evidently intended to be hung round
;

the neck."" Each symbol, too, occasionally appears worn in

like manner upon the fig^ures of Juno or Ceres, which cannot
always be discriminated and the Disk between horns, which
;

seem to form a crescent, is likewise upon the head of Isis and

Osiris, as well as upon those of their animal symbols the cow
and bull.'"
engraving are the words, in Hebrew '" See authorities before cited.
(Genesis, iii. 6) : "And the woman Maximus Tyrius : Dissertation,
saw the tree, good for food, and agree- viii. " The PseoniansMacedonia) (of
able for the eyes, and a tree to be de- worship the Sun the Pasonian sym-
;

sired for making one wise."

'" Orphic
—
A. W.
Hymn, quoted by Cle-
ment ; Miscellanies, v. " The Moon
with the face of the Gorgon."
Jacob Bryant considers the Gorgon,
or female face, surrounded with ser-
pents to bean agalma or syxaho\ of
the personified Divine wisdom, Metis
—
or Medusa. A. W.
*" GORGO is supposed ;0 hnve been
a barbarian title of Athena-Minerva,
as Bendeia and Dtctynna were of
Diana.
bol of the sun is a broad disk upon a
large post."
^
One three inches in diameter was
found in the Isle of Man, and placed
in the collection of Mr. Knight ; and
another, in Lancashire, England, was
the property of the late C.Townley.Esq.
'*' Heuodotus : ii. 132. "As for
the cow, . . . between the horns
there is a representation in gold of the
orb of the sun. The figure is not
erect, but lying down, with the limbs
under the body."

264
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 131

180. The aegis employed occasionally by Jupiter, Minerva,

and Apollo, in the Iliad, seems to have been something very
different from the symbolical breast-plate or thorax, which ap-
pears in monuments of art now extant it being borne and ;

not worn and used to excite courage or instil fear, and not
;

for defense."'' The name ^gis, however, still seems to imply

that it is derived from the same source and composed of the
same material though instead of serpents, or other symboli-
;

cal ornaments, it appears to have been decorated with golden

tassels, or knobs, hanging loosely from it the shaking and ;

rattling of which produced the effects before mentioned."'

Vulcan is said to have made it for Jupiter; °°' and to have fur-
nished it with all those terrific attributes, which became so
splendid and magnificent when personified in poetry.

BELLS IN RELIGIOUS WORSHIP.

181. Stripped, however, of all this splendor and magnifi-

cence, it was probably nothing more than a symbolical instru-
ment, signifying originally the motion of the elements, like the
sistrum of Isis, the cymbals of Cybele,""' the bells of Bacchus,
etc. whence Jupiter is said to have overcome the Titans with
;

his aegis, as Isis drove away Typhon with her sistrum j"" and the
ringing of bells and clatter of metals were almost universally
employed as a means of consecration, and a charm against the

•'* Homer : Iliad, iv. '" Homer : Iliad, xv. [Bryant's

" But Zeus. Kronides, who sits on high Translation] :
„,,^,.
Ruling ^her, disgusted at the fraud, p^™,,,,. the ,™hi»
Phcebus, ,v, in ifi^l^.T
»„?= fn
terrible ^gis his hands,
^ before them aU.''
Will slake the «gis
Dazzlingly bright within its shaggy fringe,
Also, Iliad, ii. FBryant's Transla- By Vulcan forged, the great artiEcer,
- „T .
*• ^
And given to J upiter. With which to rout
^'°°J •
.. „ ,
Armies of men. With this he led
the god who bears
, , ,.
But -phe assailants on. . . .
The aegis, Saturn's son, hath cast on me as iong as Phcebus held the aegis still.
Much grief. -piie weapons reached and wounded equally
4i,.« Tti-j Both armies, and in both the people fell."
Also, Iliad, XV. '.
"^
\,
" Now take Also, Iliad, v. [^Bryant s fransla-
The fringed thy hands, and shake
segis in tionl :
Its orb before the Greeks, to £11 " Her shoulder bore
Their breasts with fear." The dreadful aegis, with its shaggy brim
«" tj^,,.,., TT J • rr. Bordered with Terror. There was Strife,
683
Homer .: Ihad, u.
.t
[Bryant's and there
Translation]: Was Fortitude, and there was fierce Pur-
"Among them walked suit.
The blue-eyed Pallas, bearing on her arm And there the Gorgon s head, a ghastly
The priceless aegis, ever fair and new, sight.
And undecaying from its edge there hung
;
Deformed and dreadful, and a sign of woe
A hundred golden fringes, fairly wrought, When borne by Jupiter."
<»' Pindar. Strabo, x. "For
w1?w?^'''"°F?'^'"''J'^''H''"?™''-..
With this, and fierce, defiant looks she ,, ^ ,« n. See
thee, O Mother, first, the great array
<: .1. . ..

passed
Through all the Achaian host, and made of cymbals."
i„ ^h^'^^J-^^.u
Impatient V. J . .
Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 63.
*"" :
for the march, and strong
^ to en- ., n^i * ^r j
dure
'
Ihey say .i. *
that Typhon was turned
i,

The combat without pause." away, and beaten with the sistrum."

267
132 The Symbolical Language of

destroying and inert powers."" Even the Jews welcomed the

new Moon with such noises;"" which the simplicity of the
early ages employed almost everywhere to relieve her during
eclipses, supposed then to be morbid affections brought on by
the influence of an adverse power. The title Priapus, by which
the generative attribute is distinguished, seems to be merely a
corruption of Briapuos, clamorous; the beta and // being com-
mutable letters, and epithets of similar meaning being continu-
ally applied both to Jupiter and Bacchus by the poets."" Many

•*'
Sctioliast upon Theocritus : have some relation to Bacchus for ;

Idyls, ii. 36.
Ovm : Fasti, 441.
" Temesseaque concrepat sera,
Et rogat ut tectis exeat umbra suis."
'88 Jsfumbers : x. 10. " Also in the
day of your gladness, and in your
solemn days, and in the beginnings of
your months, ye shall blow with the
trumpets over your bumt-ofiferings,
and over the sacrifices of your peace-
offerings, that they may be to you a
memorial before your God."
Plutarch Symposiacs, iv. 6. [An
: the nightly ceremonies of Bacchus, as
argument to show that Iao, or Ado-
nis, of the Jews, was identical with
Dionysus, or Bacchus, the god cele-
brated in the Mysteries.] " The time
and manner of the greatest and most
holy solemnity of the Jews is exactly
agreeable to the holy Orgies of
Bacchus, for that which they call the
Feast they celebrate in the midst of
the vintage, furnishing their tables
with all sorts of fruits, while they sit
under booths or tabernacles made of
vines and ivy ; and the day which
goes immediately before this, they call
the day of Tabernacles. Within a few
days afterward they celebrate another
feast, not darkly, but openly, dedi-
cated to Bacchus, for they have a
feast among them called Kradephoria,
from carrying palm-branches, and
Thyrsophoria, when they enter into
the Temple carrying thyrsi. What
even at this day, many call the Bacchi
by the name of Sabbi, and they make
use of that word at the celebration of
the orgies of Bacchus. . . . Their
high-priest, on holidays, enters their
temple with his mitre on, arrayed in
a skin of a hind \nebris'\, embroidered
with gold, wearing buskins, and a coat
hanging down to his ankles ; besides,
he has a great many little bells hang-
ing at his garment, which make a
noise as he walks the streets. So in
the fashion is among us, they also
make use of musical instruments, and
call the nurses of the god, Chaico-
drusta. High up on the walls of their
temple is a representation of the in-
curved thyrsus and drums, which
surely can belong to no other divinity
than Bacchus. Moreover, they are
forbidden the use of honey in their
sacrifices, because they suppose that
a mixture of honey corrupts and deads
the wine. . . . This is no incon-
siderable argument that Bacchus was
worshipped by the Jews, in that,
among other kinds of punishment,
that was most remarkably odious by
which malefactors were forbid the use
of wine for so long a time as the
judge was pleased to prescribe."
'"' Such as Epibremetes, or The
Roaring One ; Erigdoupos, or The
One Crying Aloud Bromius, etc.
;

they do within, I know not ; but it is Bryant compounds the name Pria-
very probable that they perform the pus quite plausibly from the designa-
rites of Bacchus. First, they have tion of the Arab god of generation,
little trumpets, such as the Grecians Peor, and Apis, the Bull of Egypt.
used to have at their Bacchanalia to We can hardly accept this idea,
call upon their gods withal. Others although we doubt not the identity of
go before them, playing upon harps, the rites of Baal-Peor and Priapus.
whom they call Leuites whether so — The Baal-worship of Palestine was
named from Lusios, or rather from always attended by prostitution ; and
Evios, either word agrees with Bacchus. the statues of the god were like those
And I suppose that their Sabbaths of the deity of Lampsacus. A. W. —
268
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 133

Priapic figures, too, still extant, have bells attached to them "" ;

as the symbolical statues and temples of the Hindus have and ;

to wear them was a part of the worship of Bacchus among the

Greeks ;
'" whence we sometimes find them of extremely small
size, evidently meant to be worn as amulets with the phalli,
lunulse, etc. The chief-priests of the Egyptians, and also the
high-priest of the Jews, hung them, as sacred emblems, to their
sacerdotal garments;'" and the Brahmans still continue to
ring a small bell at the intervals of their prayers, ablutions, and
other acts of devotion which custom is still preserved in the
;

Roman Catholic Church at the elevation of the host. The

Lacedasmonians beat upon a brass vessel or pan, on the death
of their kings °" and we still retain the custom of tolling a
;

bell on such occasions though the reason of it is not gener-

;

ally known, any more than that of other remnants of ancient

ceremonies still existing.'"*

THE BOAT AND THE CHARIOT, SYMBOLS OF THE FEMALE PRIN-

CIPLE OF NATURE.

182. An opinion very generally prevailed among the

machine ot
ancients, that all the constituent parts of the great
the universe were mutually dependent upon each other; and
that the luminaries of heaven, while they contributed to fecun-
date and organise terrestrial matter, were in their turn nour-
ished and sustained by exhalations drawn from the humidity
of the earth and its atmosphere. Hence the Egyptians placed
the personifications of the Sun and Moon in boats '"
;
while

"" Bronzi iT Ercolano,
'" Megasthenes. See Strabo, xv.
•*'Plutarch Symposiacs, vi. 2.
: peste and outrages of wether happen,
" The high-priest goeth forth mitred
and clad in a fawn-
at these festivals,
skin \nthris\ embroidered with gold,
weaiing a tunic reaching to his feet,
and buskins, and many bells hang
t. vi. tav. 98. cause why the belles ben rongen when
thondreth, and when grete tem-
it
to the end that the feindes and wycked
spirytes shold be abashed and flee,
and cease of the movying of the tem-
peste," p. 90.
LuciAN Philofatris, 15. "They
:

from the robe, resounding at every fled when the sound of copper or iron
step." was heard."
Exodus, xxviii. 4-39. " Upon the There is also a tradition in Northern
hem robe thou shalt make
of the Europe that the Trolls and Fairies
pomegranates of blue, and purple, were driven from those countries by
and scarlet, and bells of gold between the church-bells.
them round about," etc. '" Plutarch Ids and Osiris, 34.
:

•" Schol. in Thtocrit. c. " They believe that the sun and moon
•'* " It is said," says the Golden do not go in chariots, but sail about
Legend, by Wynkyn de Worde,
" the the world perpetually in boats thus—
evil spirytes that ben in the regyon of denoting their nourishment and gen-
th' ayre double moche when they here eration from seminal moisture."
the belles rongen and this is the; Sir Gardiner Wilkinson : Raw-

269
 134 The Symbolical Language of

the Greeks, among whom the horse was a symbol of humidity,

placed them in chariots, drawn sometimes by two, sometimes
by three, and sometimes by four of these animals which is the ;

reason of the number of Bigce, Trigce, and Quadrigcs, which we

find upon coins for they could not have had any reference to
:

the public games, as has been supposed, a great part of them

having been struck by states, which not being of Hellenic
origin, had never the privilege of entering the lists on those
occasions. The vehicle itself appears likewise to have been a
symbol of the female generative power, or the means by which
the emanations of the Sun acted whence the Delphians called
;

Venus by the singular title of The Chariot;"" but the same

meaning is more frequently expressed by the figure called a
Victory accompanying; and by the fish, or some other symbol
of the waters, under it. In some instances we have observed
composite symbols signifying both attributes in this situation ;

such as the lion destroying the bull, or the Scylla,"" which is a

combination of emblems of the same kind, as those which
compose the Sphinx and Chimaera, and has no resemblance
whatever to the fabulous monster described in the Odyssey.

LIGHTNING AND SULPHUR DENOTING THE MASCULINE DIVINE

PRINCIPLE.

183. Almost every other symbol is occasionally employed

as an accessary to the chariot, and among them the thunder-

Uttson's Herodotus, ii. 58,
" These shrines were of two kinds,
One was an ark, or sacred boat, which
may be called the great shrine the
other, a sort of canopy. They were
attended by the chief priest or
prophet, clad in the leopard-skin;
they were borne on the shoulders of
several persons by means of staffs,
sometimes passing through metal rings
at the side ; and being taken into the
temple, were placed on a table or
stand prepared for the purpose. The
same mode of carrying the ark was
adopted by the Jews ; and the gods of
Babylon, as well as of Egypt, were
borne and ' set in their place ' in a
similar manner. Apuleius [Metamor-
phases, xi.) describes the sacred boat,
and the high priest holding in his
hand a lighted torch, an egg, and sul-
phur, after which the scribe read from
a papyrus certain prayers in presence
of the assembled pastiphori, or mem-
note 9. the sacred boats, or arks, contained
the emblems of life and stability,
which, when the vail was drawn aside,
; were partly seen ; and others con-
tained the sacred beetle of the sun,
overshadowed by the wings of two fig-
ures of the goddess, Thmei, or 'Truth,'
which call to mind the cherubim of
the Jews. The god Horus, the origin
of the Greek Charon, is the steersman,
par excellence, of the sacred boats, as
Vishnu is of the Indian ark."
The boat-procession of Ptah-Sokari-
Osiris was attended by the king him-
self ; and the deformed figure of the
image probably gave rise to the Greek
fable of the lameness of Vulcan, and
the Gnostic notion of the imperfect
nature of the Demiurge. The Phoe-
nicians employed similar figures,
—
called Pataeci, or fetishes. A. W.
"" PLUTARCH : Amator, " They
call Aphrodite, Tie Car."
See coins of Agrigentum, Herac-
"*'

bers of the sacred college. Some of lea in Italy, AUipa, etc.

270
 Charon, Soul, Hermes,
and Boat.

F
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 135

bolt; which is sometimes borne by Minerva and other deities,

as well as by Jupiter, and is still oftener represented alone
upon coins; having been an emblem, not merely of the de-
stroying attribute, but of the Divine nature in general whence :

the Arcadians sacrificed to thunder, lightning, and tempest '" ;

and Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem,

says, "I am the thunderbolt." "I am the fire residing in the
bodies of all things which have life.""" In the southeastern
parts of Europe, which frequently suffer from drought, thunder
is esteemed a grateful rather than terrific sound, because it is

almost always accompanied with rain, which scarcely ever

falls there without it.'°° This rain, descending from ignited
clouds, was supposed to be impregnated with electric or sethe-
real fire, and therefore to be more nutritive and prolific than
any other water; '" whence the thunderbolt was employed as
the emblem of fecundation and nutrition, as well as of destruc-
tion. The coruscations which accompany its explosions,
being thought to resemble the glimmering flashes which pro-
ceed from burning sulphur and the smell of the fixed air
;

arising from objects stricken by it being the same as that which

arisesfrom that mineral, men were led to believe that its fires
were of a sulphurous nature "" wherefore the flames of sul-
:

phur were employed in all lustrations, purifications, etc.,"' as

having an affinity with divine or aethereal fire to which its ;

name in the Greek language has been supposed to refer."* To

represent the thunderbolt, the ancient artists joined two obe-
lisks pointing contrary ways from one centre, with spikes or
arrows diverging from them thus signifying its luminous
;

essence and destructive power. Wings were sometimes added,

to signify its swiftness and activity; and the obelisks were
*" Pausanias : vii. 29. " They . . . The ceraunic fire is wonderful
worship the lightning, tempest, and for delicateness and subtilty."
thunder." "« HOMER : Iliad, viii. [Bryant's
•" Bhagavat-Gita, x. Translation]:
Phurnutus De Natura Deorum. ii.
: " The Father of the Immortal gods
^^
Our souls are fire " And mortal men beheld^ and from on high
*
. Terribly thundered, sending to the earth
™" " Grateful as thunder sum-m A bolt of fire. He flung it down before
mer," is a simile of Tasso, who, not- The car of Diomed and j
fiercely glared
The blazing sulphur."
withstanding his frequent and close
imitations of the ancients, has copied '""Juvenal : Satire, it line 157.
nature more accurately than any epic " They desired to purify, if sulphur
poet except Homer. might be had with pine, and if there
"" Plutarch : Symposiacs, iv. 2. was the dewy laurel."
" The agriculturists call the lightning '"* Plutarch : Symposiacs, it. 2.
the fertiliser of the waters, and so " I believe that brimstone is called
consider it. . . . The water often theion (or divine substance), because
falls pregnant by the thunder, and its smell is like the fierj' offensive
their union is the cause of vital heat, scent that rises from bodies that are
struck by lightning."

27s
136 The Symbolical Language of

twisted into spiral forms, to show the whirl in the air caused
by the vacuum proceeding from the explosion the origin of ;

which, as well as the productive attribute, was signified by the

aquatic plants, from which they sprang."'
184. After the conquests of Alexander had opened a com-
munication with India, Minerva was frequently represented
"' ;
with the elephant's skin upon her head instead of the helmet
the elephant having been, from time immemorial, the symbol
of divine wisdom among the Hindus whose god Ganesa or ;

Pollear is represented by a figure of this animal half-human-

ised; which the Macha Alia, or god of destruction of the
Tartars, is usually seen trampling upon. On some of the
coins of the Seleucidse, the elephant is represented with the
horns of the bull sometimes drawing the chariot of Minerva
;

in her character of Bellona, and at others bearing in his pro-

boscis a torch, the emblem of the universal agent, fire and in ;

his tail the cornucopise, the result of its exertion under the
direction of divine wisdom.'"

THE RAM REPRESENTING WISDOM.

185. The ram has been already noticed as the symbol of

Mercury but at Sais in iEgypt, it seems to have represented
;

some attribute of Neitha or Minerva; "' upon a small bust of

whom, belonging to Mr. Payne Knight, it supplies the orna-
ment for the visor of the helmet, as the sphinx does that of the
crest the whole composition showing the female and male
;

powers of generation and destruction, as attributes to Divine

Wisdom. In another small bronze of very ancient workman-
ship, which has been the handle of a vase, rams are placed at
the feet, and lions at the head, of an androgynous figure of
Bacchus, which still more distinctly shows their meaning; and
in the ancient metropolitan
temple of the North, at Upsal, in
Sweden, the great Scandinavian goddess Isa was represented
riding upon a ram, with an owl in her hand."" Among the
^Egyptians, however, Amun was the deity most commonly

'"' See coins of Syracuse, Seleucia, city of this nome or canton was Sals ;

Alexander I., king of Epirus, Elis, ... the presiding deity of the city is
etc. Upon some of the most ancient in the Egyptian tongue Neith, but the
of the latter, however, it is more simply Greeks have for the equivalent Athena
composed of flames only, diverging (also Anaitis, Tanais, and Thanatos
both ways. or Death)."
"" See coins of Alexander II., king Strabo : xvii. " The people of
of Epirus, and some of the Ptolemies. Sals and Thebes worship a sheep."
"" See those of Seleucus I., Antio- '<"•
Olaus Rudbeckius : Atlantica,
chus VI., etc. ii. page 209, figure B.
"s Plato Timaus. " The chief
:

276
Isis, Tripod, CanopuSj etc.
 — ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 137

represented under this symbol, which was usually half-human-

ised, as it appears in pi. i. vol. i. of the Select Specimens ; in
which form he was worshipped in the celebrated oracular
temple in Libya, as well as that of Thebes ; "" and was the
father of that Bacchus who is equally represented with the
ram's horns, but young and beardless.

AMUN, ZEUS OR JUPITER AND "GREAT PAN," IDENTICAL.

186. Amun, according

to some accounts, corresponded with
the Zeus,'" and according to others, with the Pan '" of the
Greeks; and probably he was something between both, like
the Lycaean Pan, the most ancient and revered deity of the
Arcadians, the most ancient people of Greece."' His title was
employed by the .^Egyptians as a common form of appellation
toward each other, as well as of solemn invocation to the
Deity, in the same manner as we employ the title of Lord, and
the French that af Seigneur ; and it appears to have been occa-
sionally compounded with other words, and applied to other
deities."* According to Jablonski, who explains it from the
modern Coptic, it signified precisely the same as the epithet
Lycaan, that is lucid, or productive of light."' It may there-
fore have been applied with equal propriety to either Jupiter
or Pan the one being the luminous aethereal spirit considered
;

abstractly, and the other, as diffused through the mass of

"" Herodotus : ii. 42. " There- Ing, doublless, before the Lunar Wor-
fore the Egyptians give their statues ship had been introduced into Greece,
of Jupiter (Amun) the face of a ram Their language was brolcen into dia-
and from them the practice has passed lects, which were lost long before the
to the Ammonians who are a joint appearance of Grecian literature ; they
colony of the Egyptians and Ethiopi- were Pelasgians and of fabulous anti-
ans, speaking a language between ihe quity, but were probably emigrants
two." from Asia. They retained their coun-
'" Herodotus : ii. 42. " The try when other districts were repeated-
Egyptian name for Zeus or Jupiter is ly colonised, because it was poor and
Amun." mountainous.
"' Plutarch Isis and Osiris, 9.
:
"* Pausanias : Eliac. I. xv. 7.
" They regarded him as the First God, " They make libations to Hera, Am-
and the same as Pan, the All." monia, and Parammon. Parammon is a
Wisdom is called )DX, Amun, by title of Hermes."
Solomon
"'
Proverbs, viii. 30. —A. W. Plutarch : Isis and Osiris, 9. " He-
Ovid : Fasti, i., ii. catseus, the Abderite, says that the
" Before the Moon was formed, if they can Egyptians employed this term to each
be believed, other,when they accosted any one:
The country had the name Arcadia, ^^ jj^^ expression as an appella-
" The Arcadians are said to have held their
tion
Ere J?vl was bom, and that theh race '" Jablonski : EgyfUan Pantham,
Was older than the Moon." Book II. ii. 12. Wilkinson remarks
Aristotle says that they expelled a that it is from a verb signifying to
previous population, " before the come; Manetho, that it means conceal-
adopting of the Moon : wherefore ment ; and lamblichus, tliat which
;
they were called Proselenians " mean- btings to light.

279
 "

138 The Symbolical Lmtguage of

universal matter. Hence Pan is called, in the Orphic Hytnns

Zeus the mover of all things, and described as harmonising them
by the music of his pipe."" He is also called the pervader of
the sky''" and of the sea," to signify the principle of order dif-
fused through heaven and earth and the Arcadians called him ;

lh.Q Lord of Matter,™ which title is expressed in the Latin name

Sylvanus; Sylva, 'l^^i^^^, and 'TAH, being the same word
written according to the different modes of pronouncing of
different dialects. In a choral ode of Sophocles, he is addressed
by the title of Author and director of the dances of the gods j "*
as being the author and disposer of the regular motions of the
universe, of which these divine dances were symbols.'" Ac-
cording to Pindar, this Arcadian Pan was the associate or
husband of Rhea,™ and consequently the same as Kronos or
Saturn, with whom he seems to be confounded in the ancient
coins cited in section 112 some of them having the half- ;

humanised horse, and others the figure commonly called

Silenus, which is no other than Pan, in the same attitudes with
the same female.

THE MYSTIC DANCE.

Among the Greeks all dancing was of the mimetic

187.
kind wherefore Aristotle classes it with poetry, music, and
:

painting, as being equally an imitative art "' and Lucian calls :

it a science of imitation and exhibition, which explained the concep-

tions of the mind, and certified to the organs of sense things naturally
beyond their reach™ To such a degree of refinement was it car-
ried, that Athenaeus speaks of a Pythagorean, who could
display the whole system of his sect in such gesticulations,
more clearly and strongly than a professed rhetorician could
"= Hymn, x. " The horned Zeus." " The choral dance of the stars, the
Also Fragment, xxviii. orderly concert of planets, their com-
"Zeusisgodof all, of all Cerastes; mon union and harmony of motion,
Blowing with the breath the pipe, constitute the exhibition of the Dance
And making the au- resound.
^f ^^^ First-Bom."
"' Orphic Hymn, v. AI&EPO- m
Pindar : FytAia, iii.
lie Cnpunr-T Ti-Q •
/linr line 7rn "I will invoke the Mother of the Gods,
, Aj^AA^f^'^n^l
' ^' The Revered Mistress, her,
"
..
AAIUAArKTO^. '

Whom together with i>an,

'" Macrobius Saturnalia, i. 22.: Themaidensby my porch at night,
" Lord of Primal Matter." Welcome with joyftif song."
"" Sophocles: Ajax, 694-700. '" Aristotle: Art of Poets, i.

"lollo! Pan! Pan! ''"

LUCIAN De Saltatione, 43.
:

Oh Pan, thou ocean-wanderer, " The Imitative Art is a certain knovifl-

OfTnow-bou!f/cyl!ln3, edge, an exhibition, a showing of
Show thyself. Prince of the Gods, things arcane to the mental powers,
Who leadest the dance !
and the expressing of the things which
''' LuciAN : Concerning the Dance, are occult."

280
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 139

in words ; for the truth of which, however,not vouch, we do

the attempt being sufficient. Dancing was
a part of the also
ceremonial in all mystic rites : "'
whence it was held in such high
esteem, that the philosopher Socrates, and the poet Sophocles,
both persons of exemplary gravity, and the latter of high
political rank and dignity, condescended to cultivate it as an
useful and respectable accomplishment."' The author of the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes that God accompanying his
lyre with the dance, joined by other deities;"' and a Corin-
thian poet, cited by Athenseus, introduces the Father of Gods
and men employed in the same exercise."* The ancient
Hindus, too, paid their devotions to the Sun by a dance imita-
tive of his motions, which they performed every morning and
evening, and which was their only act of worship."" Among
the Greeks the Knosian dances were peculiarly sacred to
Jupiter, as the Nyssian were to Bacchus, both of which were
under the direction of Pan "° who, being the principle of
;

universal order, partook of the nature of all the other gods;

they being personifications of particular modes of acting of
the great all-ruling principle, and he of his general law of
pre-establishing harmony ; whence upon an ancient earthen
vase of Greek workmanship, he is represented playing upon
a pipe, between two figures, the one male and the other
female; over the latter of which is written Nooss, and over
the former Alkos; whilst he himself is distinguished by the
title MoLKOs; so that this composition explicitly shows him in
the character of universal harmony, resulting from mind and
strength these titles being, in the ancient dialect of Magna
;

Graecia, where the vase was found, the same as Nous, Alke,
and MoLPE, in ordinary Greek. The ancient dancing, how-
ever, which held so high a rank among liberal and sacred
arts, was entirely imitative, and esteemed honorable or other-

"' Athen^US : Deipnosophista, i. old age. The fair-haired Graces also

17. dance, and the Hours, Harmonia,
LuciAN : De Saltatione. " an- No Hebe, and Venus-Aphrodite, daughter
cient initiation can be found where of Zeus, each holding the other's
there is not dancing." hands by the wrist. And with them
Judges, xxi. ig. The Israelites had sport Ares and watchful Hermes ; and
the same custom. Phcebus Apollo strikes the harp, tak-
«8 Athen.«us : Deipnosophista. ing grand and imposing steps. Both
''"
Homer : Hymn to Apollo. golden-tressed Leto and deep-planning
"The Muses, answering with melo- Zeus are delighted to perceive the
dious voice, sing the gifts imperishable mighty Mind, their dear Son, thus
of the gods, and the sufferings of men, sporting among the gods."
who with all they have received of the '** Athen^us xix.
:

immortals, are unable, nevertheless, '^^ LuciAN De Saltatoine.

:

to procure counsel and resources by "" Sophocles AJax.

: " Nyssian
which to keep off death, and ward off and Knossian Dances alike."

283
 140 Tlie Symbolical Langtiage of

wise, in proportion to the dignity or indignity of what it was

meant to express. The highest was
which exhibited mil- that
itary exercises and exploits with the most perfect skill, grace
and agility; excellence in which was often honored by a
statue in some distinguished attitude '" and we strongly
;

suspect, that the figure commonly called " The Fighting Gladi-
ator" is one of them there being a very decided character of
;

individuality both in the form and features and it would ;

scarcely have been quite naked, if it had represented any event

of history.

PAN, THE NYMPHS, AND THEIR RELATIONS TO THE SEXUAL SYM-

BOLISM.

188. Pan, like other mystic deities, was wholly unknown

to the first race of poets there being no mention of him in
;

either the Iliad, the Odyssey, or in the genuine poem of Hesiod ;

and the mythologists of later times having made him a son of

Mercury by Penelope, the wife of Ulysses a fiction, perhaps, ;

best accounted for by the conjecture of Herodotus, that the

terrestrial genealogies of the mystic deities. Pan, Bacchus, and
Hercules, are mere fables, bearing date from the supposed time
when they became objects of worship.'" Both in Greece and
^gypt. Pan was commonly represented under the symbolical
form of the goat half-humanised "' from which are derived ;

his subordinate ministers or personified emanations, called

Satyrs, Fauns, Tituri, Faniskoi ; who, as well as their parent,
were wholly unknown to the ancient poets. Neither do they
appear to have been known in -^gypt, though a late traveller
was so singularly fortunate as to find a mask of a caprine
Satyr upon an ancient .^Eyptian lyre represented in the an-
cient paintings of the Thebaid; in a form, indeed, so unlike
that of any ancient people, and so like to a Welsh or Irish
harp, that we can not but suspect it to be merely an embel-
lishment of an idea, that he carried out with him."' M. De-
131 Athen^ub : Deipnosophista, xiv. and Pan is represented in Egypt by
26. the painters and the sculptors, just as he
"' Herodotus : ii. 146. " To me is in Greece, with the face and legs of
it is quite manifest that the names of a goat. They do not, however, be-
these gods became known to the lieve this to be his shape, or consider
Greeks after those of their other dei- him in any respect unlike the other
ties ; and that they count their birth gods ; but tliey represent him thus for
from the time when they first acquired a (mystical) reason which I prefer
a knowledge of them." not to relate. ... In Egyptian the
™ Herodotus: ii. 46. "These goat and Pan are both called Men-
Egyptians, who are the Mendesians, des."
consider Pan to be one of the eight "* See print fewn Mr. Bruce's draw-
gods who existed before the twelve ;
inq;, in Dr, BuWlO^S History of Music.

284
r

Nereid on a Monster,

Nereid on a Hippocampus.
 —
;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 141

non, in hismore accurate and extensive survey of the same

ruins,found nothing of the kind.
189. The Nymphs, however, the corresponding emanations
of the female productive power of the universe, had been
long known for whether considered as the daughters of
;

Oceanus or of Jupiter,"' their parent had long been enrolled

among the personages of the vulgar mythology. Upon
monuments of ancient art, they are usually represented with
the Fauns and Satyrs, frequently in attitudes very lascivious
and indecent but in the Homeric times, they seem to have
;

been considered as guardian spirits or local deities of the

springs, the valleys, and the mountains; "° the companions of
the river-gods, who were the male progeny of Oceanus '" ;

though the mystic system, as before observed, allowed them a

more exalted genealogy."'
190. Pan
sometimes represented ready to execute his
is
and sometimes exhibiting the result of it
characteristic ofi&ce,
in the former of which, all the muscles of his face and body
appeared strained and contracted and in the latter, fallen and ;

dilated; while in both the phallus is of disproportionate

magnitude, to signify that it represented the predominant
attribute."' In one instance he appears pouring water upon

"' Catullus :In Celt. " Oceanus, I. a fountain ; 2. a nubile or newly-

father of the Nymphs." See also, married woman ; 3. a part of the
Callimachus : Hymn to Diana ; and female sexual organism. It evidently
^EscHYLUS: Prometheus Bound. was introduced into Greek usage to
"' Homer : Iliad, vi. denote the female principle, supposed
" Mountain Nymphs, to be expressed by water. Hence the
Daughters of segis-bearing Jupiter, lotos was named Nymphtea, Jacob
Came to the spot, and planted it with Bryant (Analysis of Ancient Mythol-
elms."
ogy, ii. 345, etc.) has derived the term
Odyssey : vi. 123. "A female voice from the "Amonian" words ain, a
of damsel Nymphs who possess tlie
fountain, and omphe, an oracle ; after-
loftysummits of the mountains and ward contracted into Numpha. It is
the fountains of the rivers, and the vt-orthy of note that nympheea or
grassy marshes, has come' around me."
oracle-houses were always by such
'" Iliad: xxi.
fountains : and it was doubtless from
" Achelous, Idng an idea of peculiar spiritual or mantis-
Of rivers, cannot viewithliim, nor yet
The great and mighty deep nrom wtiich tic qualities supposed to be peculiar
proceed to the female sex, that the same de-
AU streams and seas and founts and wa- signation was applied to a part of their
tery depths."
body.
'^ The term Nymph is evidently Suidas informs us that the mother of
more peculiar than Mr. Knight has Zeus or Jupiter was called Nympha
indicated. In the later Greek writers by the Athenians ; thus figuring
it is applied to a young woman be- mystically his origin from the Divine
trothed or newly-married. More an- Female Principle of the Universe.
ciently,however, it always related to a A. W.
race of females, descended from Zeus '3»
Figures of this character are fre-
or Oceanus, who presided over foun- quent ; and Mr. Knight has preserved

tains and streams of water. Indeed, copies in his celebrated treatise " On
Suidas has defined nymph to mean : the Worship of Priapus."

287
 142 The Symbolical Language of

it,"° but more commonly standing near water, and accom-

panied by aquatic fowls in which character he is confounded
;

with Priapus, to whom geese were particularly sacred.'"

Swans, too, frequently occur as emblems of the waters upon
coins and sometimes with the head of Apollo on the
;

reverse '" when there may be some allusion to the ancient

;

notion of their singing a notion which seems to have arisen

;

from the noises which they make in the high latitudes of the
North, prior to their departure at the approach of winter."'
The pedum, or pastoral crook, the symbol of attraction, and
the pipe, the symbol of harmony, are frequently placed near
him, to signify the means and effect of his operation.

THE GOAT AND PRIAPIC ORGIES.

191. Though the Greek writers call the deity who was
represented by the sacred goat at Mendes, Pan, he more ex-
actly answers to Priapus, or the generative attribute consid-
ered abstractedly; '" which was usually represented in .^gypt,
as well as in Greece, by the phallus onl3^''" This deity was
honored with a place in most of their temples,"' as the lingam
is in those of the Hindus and all the hereditary priests were
;

initiated or consecrated to him, before they assumed the

sacerdotal office "' for he was considered as a sort of ac-
:

cessory attribute to all the other divine personifications, the

great end and purpose of whose existence was generation or
production."' A part of the worship offered both to the goat
Mendes, and the bull Apis, consisted in the women tendering
their persons to him, which it seems the former often accepted,
though the taste of the latter was too correct."' An attempt
''^»
Bronzi iTErcolano, tav. xciii. priestsassuming the hereditary sacer
'*' Petronius Satyriacon, 136-7.
: dotal rank in Egypt, are first initiated
Published in the Bohn Library. into the sacred Mysteries of this god."
"' See coins of Clazomenae in Pel- "8 Inman : Ancient Faiths Embod-
leria, and the Hunterian Museum. ied in Ancient Names, vols. i. ii.; also
''"
Olaus Rudbeckius : Atlantica, Ancient Pagan and Modem Christian
part II. V. Also Olaus Magnuson : Symbolism.
ix. 15. "' Pindar See Strabo xvii.
: :

"' DIODORUS SICULUS : i "They ..

By the Mendesiansteep, at the border
say that the iLgyptians employed the of the sea,
goat as the Priapus was employed by The horn of the Nile where herded goats
mingle with womeQ."
the Greeks, to signify the sexual
parts." Herodotus ii. " : A
goat copu-
"' R. Payne Knight : " The lated publicly with a woman at a pub-
Worship of Priapus:' lie assembly of men."
DiODORUs SicuLus i. : Diodorus Siculus : i. " In the
"• Worship of Priapus. Also Dl- prescribed forty days the women only
ODORUS Siculus. saw him (Apis) standing before his
"' Diodorus Siculus . i. " The face, and raising their clothes they ex-
 Pan and Goat.

Aphrodite on a Goat.
 : ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 143

seems to have been made, in early times, to introduce similar

acts of devotion into Italy, for when the oracle of Juno was
consulted upon the long-continued barrenness of the Roman
matrons, its answer was, " Iliadas matres caper hirtus inito : " "°
but these mystic reiinements not being understood by that
rude people, they could think of no other way of fulfilling the
mandate, than sacrificing a goat, and applying the skin, cut
into thongs, to the bare backs of the ladies:

• Jussse sua terga maritse

Pellibus exsectis percutienda dabant

which, however, had the desired effect

Virque pater subito, nuptaque mater erat."'

At Mendes female goats were also held sacred, as symbols of

the passive generative attribute '" and on Grecian monu-
;

ments of art, we often find caprine satyrs of that sex. The

fable of Jupiter having been suckled by a goat, probably
arose from some emblematical composition, the true explan-
ation of which was only known to the initiated. Such was
Juno Sospita of Lanuvium, near Rome, whose goat-skin dress
signified the same as her title and who, on a votive car of
;

very ancient Etruscan work found near Perugia, appears ex-

actly in the form described by Cicero, as the associate of
Hercules dressed in the lion's skin, or the Destroyer."'

THE COMPOSITE SYMBOLS.

192. The Greeks frequently combined the symbolical ani-

mals, especially in engravings upon gems, where we often
find the forms of the ram, goat, horse, cock, and various others,
blended into one, so as to form Pantheic compositions, signi-
fying the various attributes and modes of action of the Deity."'

hibited their sexual parts ; but the See Tracts on Flagellations, col-
rest of the time, it was forbidden them lected by the late Henry Buckle ; also
to come into the presence of the divin- The Merry Sisters of St, Bridget, etc.
ity." '" Strabo : xvii. " The Mende-
Plutarch Brute Beasts Making
: sians revere the goat, especially the
Use of Reason, 5. Gryllus " The : male."
Mendesian goat in ^gypt, which is Herodotus ii. 46. " The Mende-
:

reported to have been shut up with sians hold all goats in veneration, but
several beautiful women, yet never to the male more than the female."
have offered copulation with them, "' Cicero : Nature of the Gods, i.

but when he was at liberty, with a 29. " With goat-skin, spear, shield,
lustful fury flew upon the she-goats." and with open buskins."
160 < Lg[ (jjg rough goat approach "* Found in numerous gems copied
the Trojan matrons." in Mr. Knight's Treatise upon the
'" Ovid: Fasti, ii. "Speedily the Worship of Ptiapus; but never upon
man a father, the wife a mother was." coins.

291
 144 The Symbolical Language of

Cupid is sometimes represented wielding the mask of Pan,

and sometimes playing upon a lyre, while sitting upon the
back of a lion '" devices of which the enigmatical meaning
;

has been already sufficiently explained in the explanations of

the component parts. The Hindus, and other nations of the
eastern parts of Asia, expressed similar combinations of attri-
butes by symbols loosely connected, and figures unskilfully
composed of many heads, legs, arms, etc. which appear from ;

the epithets hundred-headed, hundred-handed, etc., so frequent in

the old Greek poets, to have been not wholly unknown to
them though the objects to which they are applied, prove
;

that their ideas were taken from figures which they did not
understand, and which they therefore exaggerated into fabu-
lous monsters,"" the enemies or arbitrators of their own gods.
Such symbolical figures may, perhaps, have been worshipped
in the western parts of Asia, when the Greeks first settled
there of which the Diana of Ephesus appears to have been
;

a remain for both her temple and that of the Apollo Didy-
:

mseus were long anterior to the Ionian emigration "' though ;

the composite images of the latter, which now exist, are, as

before observed, among the most refined productions of Gre-
cian taste and elegance. A Pantheistic bust of this kind is
engraved in plates Iv. and Ivi. of vol. i. of the Select Specimens,
having the dewlaps of a goat, the ears of a bull, and the claws
of a crab placed as horns upon his head. The hair appears
wet and out of the temples spring fish, while the whole ot
;

the face and breast is covered with foliage that seems to

grow from the flesh signifying the result of this combination
;

of attributes in fertilising and organising matter. The

Bacchus Dendrites, and Neptune Phultalmios^''' the one the
principle of vegetation in trees, and the other in plants, were
probably represented by composite symbolical images of this
kind.
''"
See Florentine Museum. symbols in the temple of Bel at
"• Homer : Iliad, i. [Bijant's Babylon.
Translation]: "' Pausanias Achaia, ii. 4. " The
:

"Thou didst come and loose sanctuary of Apollo in Didymi and the
His bonds, and call up to the Olympian oracle are more ancient than any other
bmlding among the lonians much
The huldred-handed, whom the immortal ;

gods older still than the Ephesian Artemis,

Have named Briareus, but the sons of among the lonians."
men^geon." ik Plutarch Sympodacs, V. 3.
:

See also Pindar : Pythia, i. and " Thus began the enquiry why the an-
viii. cients dedicated the pine to Poseidon
Such were also employed in
figures and Dionysus. As for my part it did
the mythological sculpture and other not seem incongruous to me, for both
representations of ancient Egypt. the gods seem to preside over the
Berosus notices these composite moist seminal and generative prin-

292
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 145

CYBELE COMBINED WITH DEITIES OF OTHER WORSHIPS.

193. A female Pantheistic figure in silver with the borders

of the drapery plated with gold, and the whole finished in a
manner surpassing almost anything extant, was among the
things found at Macon on the Saone, in the year 1764, and
published by Count Caylus."° It represents Cybele, the uni-
versal Mother, with the mural crown on her head, and the
wings of pervasion growing from her shoulders, mixing the
productive elements of heat and moisture, by making a liba-
tion upon the flames of an altar from a golden patera, with
the usual knob in the centre of it, representing, probably, the
lingam. On each side of her head is one of the Dioscuri,
signifying the alternate influence of the diurnal and nocturnal
sun and, upon a crescent supported by the tips of her wings,
;

are the seven planets, each signified by a bust of its presiding

deity resting upon a globe, and placed in the order of the
days of the week named after them. In her left hand she
holds two cornucopiae, to signify the result of her operation
on the two hemispheres of the Earth and upon them are the
;

busts of Apollo and Diana, the presiding deities of those

hemispheres, with a golden disk, intersected by two transverse
lines, such as is observable on other pieces of ancient art, and
such as the barbarians of the North employed to represent the
solar year, divided into four parts,"" at the back of each.

DAYS OF THE WEEK NAMED AFTER ASTRAL DIVINITIES.

194. How the days of the week came

to be called by the
names of the why
the planets were thus placed in
planets, or
an order so different from that of nature, and even from that
in which any theorist ever has placed them, is difficult to con-
jecture. The earliest notice of it in any ancient writing now
extant, is in the work of an historian of the beginning of the
third century of Christianity '" who says that it was unknown
;

to the Greeks, and borrowed by the Romans from other nations,

who divided the planets on this occasion by a sort of musical

ciple; and to the Poseidon Phytalmios ones in silver, found with it, came in-
(nourisher of plants) and Dionysus to Mr. Knight's possession.
Dendrites (patron of trees) all the "" Olaus Rudbeckius Atlantica,
;

Greelcs sacrifice." vols. i. p. go and ii. p. 212, fig. 4, and

™ Vol. VII. pi. Ixxi. pp. 161, 162.
The plated parts remain entire. "' The part of Plutarch's Sympo-
The picture and several other small siacs. in which it was discussed, is un-
fortunately lost.

295
146 The Symbolical Language of

scale,beginning with Saturn, the most remote from the cen-

tre,and then passing over two to the Sun, and two more to
the Moon, and so on, till the arrangement of the week was
complete as at present, only beginning with the day which now
stands last. Other explanations are given, both by the same
and by later writers but as they appear to us to be still more
;

remote from probability, it will be sufficient to refer to them,

without entering into further details.'" Perhaps the difficult}-
has arisen from a confusion between the deities and the plan-
ets the ancient nations of the North having consecrated each
;

day of the week to some principal personage of their

mythology, and called it after his name, beginning with
Loki or Saturn, and ending with Freya or Venus whence, :

when these, or the corresponding names in other lan-

guages, were applied both to the planets and to the days of the
week consecrated to them, the ancient mythological order of
was retained, though the ideas expressed by them
the titles
were no longer religious, Perhaps, too, it
but astronomical.
may be accounted for from the Ptolemaic system
according ;

to which the order of the planets was, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,

the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon for if the natural day :

consisted of twenty-four hours, and each hour was under the

influence of a planet in succession, and the first hour of Sat-
urday be sacred to Saturn, the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-
second, will be so likewise; so that the twenty-third will be-
long to Jupiter, the twenty-fourth to Mars, and the first hour
of the next day to the Sun. In the same manner, the first hour
of the ensuing day will belong to the Moon, and so on through
the week, according to the seemingly capricious order in which
all nations, using the hebdomadal computation of time, have
placed them.

DISA, THE ISIS OF NORTHERN EUROPE.

195. The Disa or Isa of the North was represented by a

conical figure enveloped in a net, similar to the cortina of Apollo
on the medals of Cos, Chersonesus in Crete, Naples in Italy,
and the Syrian kings but instead of having the serpent
;

coiled round it, as in the first, or some symbol or figure of

Apollo placed upon it, as in the rest, it is terminated in a

human head."^ This goddess is unquestionably the Isis whom

"' Cass. Dion. : xxxvi. p. 37. '«= Olaus Rudbeckius : Atlantica,

Hyde's : De Relig. Vet Persar. v. TI. v. page 219.

2q6
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 147

the ancient Suevi, according to Tacitus, worshipped '" for the ;

initial letter of the first name appears to be an article or prefix

joined to it and the Egyptian Isis was occasionally repre-
;

sented enveloped in a net, exactly as the Scandinavian goddess

was at Upsal.'"^ This goddess is delineated on the sacred
drums of the Laplanders, accompanied by a child, similar to
the Horus of the ^Egyptians, who so often appears in the
lap of Isis on the religious monuments of that people.'*'
The ancient Muscovites also worshipped a sacred group, com-
posed of an old woman with one male child in her lap and
another standing by her, which probably represented Isis and
her ofiFspring. They had likewise another idol, called the
golden heifer, which seems to have been the animal symbol of
the same personage.'""
196. Common observation would teach the inhabitants of
polar climates that the primitive state of water was ice the ;

name of which, in all the Northern dialects, has so near an

afiinity with that of the goddess, that there can be no doubt
of their having been originally the same, though it is equally
a title of the corresponding personification in the East Indies.
The conical form also unquestionably means the egg there ;

being in the Albani collection a statue of Apollo sitting upon

a great number of eggs, with a serpent coiled round them,
exactly as he is upon the vailed cone or cortina, round which
the serpent is occasionally coiled, upon the coins before cited.
A conic pile of eggs is also placed by the statue of him, draped,
as he appears on a silver tetradrachm of Lampsacus,"" engraved
in pi. Ixii. of vol. i. of the Select Specimens.

THE PILLAR-STONES.

197. Stones of a similar conical form are represented upon

the colonial medals of Tyre, and called ambrosial stones ; from
which, probably, came the amberics, so frequent all over the
the Northern hemisphere. These, from the remains still ex-
tant, appear to have been composed of one of these cones set
into the ground, with another stone placed upon the point of
and so nicely balanced, that the wind could move it, though
it,

so ponderous that no human force, unaided by machinery,

can displace it whence they are now called logging rocks, and
;

'"Tacitus: Germany, c. i-n. '«' Olaus Rudbeckius: Atlantica.

•""•^
Isiac Table; also Olaus Rud- II. vi. pp. 512, 513.
BECKlus: .,4^/a«/;V3, V. pp. 209, 210. ""In the cabinet of Mr. Payne
"' Olaus Rudbeckius : Atlantica, Knight.
II. V. page 280.

299
148 The Symbolical Language of

pendre stones™ as they were anciently living stones, and stones of

God :'"''
titles, which differ but meaning from that on
little in
the Tyrian coins. Damascius saw several of them in the
neighborhood of Heliopolis or Baalbek, in Syria particularly ;

one which was then moved by the wind '" and they are ;

equally found in the Western extremities of Europe, and the

Eastern extremities of Asia, in Britain, and in China.'" Prob-
ably the stone which the patriarch Jacob anointed with oil,
according to a mode of worship once generally practiced,'"
as it still is by the Hindus, was of this kind."* Such immense
masses being moved by causes seeming so inadequate, must
naturally have conveyed the idea of spontaneous motion to
ignorant observers, and persuaded them that they were ani-
mated by an emanation of the vital spirit whence they were :

consulted as oracles, the responses of which could always be

easily obtained by interpreting the different oscillatory move-
ments into nods of approbation and dissent. The figures of
the Apollo Didymxus, on the Syrian coins before mentioned,
are placed sitting upon the point of the cone, where the more
rude and primitive symbol of the logging rock is found poised:
and we are told, in a passage before cited, that the oracle of
this god near Miletus existed before the emigration of the
Ionian colonies that is, more than eleven hundred years be-
:

fore the Christian era wherefore we are persuaded that it was

:

originally nothing more than one of these baitiilia or symbol-

ical groups which the luxury of wealth and refinement of
;

art gradually changed into a most magnificent temple and

most elegant statue.

CAIRNS OR HILLOCKS AT CROSS-ROADS TO CONSECRATE THE

SPOT.

19S. There were anciently other sacred piles of stones,

equally or perhaps more frequent all over the North, called
by the Greeks Lophoi Hermaioi or hillocks of Mercury ;'''"' of

"' NoRDEN Cornwall, -f. "j^.

: 713; Arnnobius: i. ; Herodian: /?2
'™ " Stones ensouled and Baitulia." Macrino.
Pseudo-Sanchon. Frag, apud Eus-:
'" Genesis, xxviii. 22. " And this
eiium. The last title, Baitulia, seems stone which I have set up for a pillar,
to be a corruption of the scriptural shall be God's House (Beth-El)." A
name Bethel. teme7ios or enclosure was also made
"'Damascius: Vila Isidori. "I there ; and subsequently a sacred Calf
saw the Bcetuliiim moving in the air." set up, which was afterward carried
'"Norden: G^rMw/a//, page 7g. away and placed in the Museum of
KiRCHER: China Illustrated, page the king of Assyria. Hosea,-!L.ii.
270. "5 Homer Odyssey, xviii.
:
" Be-
'" Clem. Alex. : Miscellanies, vii. yond tile city where is a Hermaic

300
 —

Ancient Art and Mythology. 149

whom they were probably the original symbols. They were

placed by the sides, or in the points of intersection, of roads;
where every traveller that passed, threw a stone upon them in
honor of Mercury, the guardian of all ways or general con-
ductor;"" and there can be no doubt that many of the ancient
crosses observable in such situations were erected upon them ;

their pyramidal form affording a commodious base, and the

substituting of a new object being the most obvious and usual
remedy for such kind of superstition. The figures of this god
sitting upon fragments of rock or piles of stone, one of which
has been already cited, are probably more elegant and refined
modes of signifying the same ideas.

VENUS-ARCHITIS, THE ASHTGRETH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

199. The old Pelasgian Hermes of the Athenians consisted,

as before observed, of a human head placed upon an inverted
obelisk with a phallus of which several are extant
; as also ;

a female draped figure terminating below in the same square

form. These seem to be of the Venus-Architis, or primitive
Venus ; of whom
there was a statue in wood at Delos, sup-
posed to be the work of Daedalus '" and another in a temple
;

upon Mount Libanus, of which Macrobius's description ex-

actly corresponds with the figures now extant of which one ;

is given in pi. Iviii. of vol. i. of the Select Specimens. " Her ap-
pearance," he says, " was melancholy, her head covered, and
her face sustained by her left hand, which was concealed under
her garment." '" Some of these figures have the mystic title
Aspasia upon them, signifying perhaps the welcome or gratu-
lation to the returning spring for they evidently represent
:

nature in winter, still sustained by the inverted obelisk, the

emanation of the sun pointed downward, but having all her
powers enveloped in gloom and sadness. Some of these
figures were probably, like the Paphian Venus, double-sexed ;

whence arose the Hermaphrodite, afterward represented under

more elegant forms accounted for as usual by poetical fables.
;

cairn " or lophos. The expression is were deposited at the cross-roads."

doubtless an interpolation. The cairns, A. W.
pillars, and obelisks, erected at the "^ Anthology, i. Epigramm 12.
crossings of streets (Jeremiah, xi. 13) Phurnutus : Nature of the Gods.
''"
were regarded as consecrating those Pausanias : Bceotia, xi. 12.
places. It is a curious result that the " The Delians have a statue of Aphro-
change of religion has rendered the dite (by Da;dalus), which is a four-
same spots unhallowed, and that ac- sided figure to the feet."
cordingly suicides and criminals that "' Macrobius Saturnalia, i. 21.
:

might not be buried in "holy ground," "Capite obnupto, specie tristi, faciem
'
manu teva intra amictam sustinens
301
 ;;

I50 The Symbolical Language of

Occasionally the attribute seems to be signified by the cap and

wings of Mercury.

ALLEGORICAL SYMBOLS AND STORIES EXPLAINED IN THE

MYSTERIES.

200. The symbol of the ram was, it seems, explained in the

Eleusinian Mysteries,"" and the nature and history of the Pe-
lasgian Mercury in those of Samothrace "° the device on ;

whose coins is his emblem either of the ram or the cock,'" and
where he was distinguished by the mystic title Casmilus or
Cadmilus '"^ of which, probably, the Latin word Camillus
;

and the Greek name of the fabulous hero Cadmus, are equally
abbreviations "^ for the stories of this hero being married to
:

Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus, and of both him

and his wife being turned into serpents, are clearly allegorical
and it is more probable that the colony which occupied
"' Pausanias : ii. 3.
"» Herodotus pe-
: ii.
culiarity which the Greeks observe in
their statues of Mercury they did not
derive from the Egyptians, but from
the Pelasgi. Whoever has been in-
itiated into the Mysteries of the Ca-
beiri understand what I mean.
will
The Samothracians received these
Mysteries from the Pelasgi, who be-
fore they went to live in Attica, were
dwellers in Samothrace, and imparted
their religious ceremonies to the in-
habitants. The Athenians, then, who
were first of all the Greeks to make
their statues of Mercury in this way,
learnt the practice from the Pelas-
gians and by this people a religious
; Astart6, Demeter, Cybele, or Isis, not
account of the matter is given, which
is explained in the Samothracian Mys-
teries."
'*' Hunterian Museum : table xlvi.
fig. 21. Also coins belonging to Mr.
Knight.
'*' Scholiast upon Apollonius
dius ; Book I. v. 917. " They are
initiated into the Mysteries of the Ca-
beiri in Samothrace, whose names
Mnaseas tells us. They
number Axieros, Axiokersa, Axio-
: Eleusinian and Sabazian Mysteries,
kersos. Axieros is Demeter Axio-
kersa is Persephone, and Axiokersos
is Hades or Pluto. The fourth placed
in the number, Casmilus, is Hermes
as Dionysidorus relates."
" They add also a fourth, Kadmilus
(Kadmiel), who is Hermes."
'83 Lycophron : v. 162. " Kad-
51. "The milus, the Boeotian Hermes," or Mer-
cury. The Scholium upon the same,
says, " by syncope, Cadmus."
These annotations are " clear as
mud." Their most prominent idea is
a theocrasy, by which several deities,
as they are popularly understood, are
reduced to a few personages. Cadmil-
lus is made to include the Theban
Serpent-god, Cadmus, the Thoth of
Egypt, the Hermes of the Greeks, and
the Emeph or .^Esculapius of the
Alexandrians and Phoenicians. The
other Cabeirians embrace the gods of
the universe, of generation and de-
struction, whether represented by
excepting Europa and Persephone
also Osiris, Pluto, and the judges of
the Underworld. It is hardly prudent
to give an opinion where men
so able and accomplished have dif-
fered ; nevertheless, it appears from
Rho- the comparing of evidence, the Cabei-
rian like other sacred Orgies, were
somewhat changed in different coun-
tries, but were substantially alike.
are four in They involve the leading idea of the
; and a portion of the mythological his-
tory. The same dances upon the sup-
posed plan of the planetary system,
wailing for the First-Bom, dividing
. and occupying of the earth, and the
introduction of the arts, characterise
these rites. We
suppose, therefore.

302
 Hermes drawn by Cocks.

cy^A:> / r
..
«

Kadmos and Hermic

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 151

Thebes, were called Cadmeians from the title of their deity

than from the name of their chief.

THE PALM-TREE SYMBOL.

201. The Egyptian Mercury, or Thoth, carried a branch

of palm which his priests also wore in their san-
in his hand,
dals,'" probably as a badge of their consecration to immortal-
ity: for this tree is mentioned in the Orphic Poems as pro-
verbial for longevity, and was the only one known to the
ancients, which never changed its leaves all other evergreens ;

shedding them, though not regularly nor all at once."' It has

also the property of flourishing in the most parched and dry
situations, where no other large trees will grow and therefore ;

might naturally have been adopted as a vegetable symbol of

the sun, whence it frequently accompanies the horse on the
coins of Carthage '" and in the Corinthian sacristy in the
;

temple at Delphi was a bronze palm-tree with frogs and

water-snakes round its root, signifying the sun fed by humid-
ity.'" The pillars in many ancient .Egyptian temples repre-
sent palm-trees with their branches lopped off; and it is prob-
able that the palm-trees in the temple of Solomon were pillars

that they comprehended the old Asia-
ticPagan system of Fire and Serpent
worship, which the Phoenicians dif-
fused over Asia, Syria, and Palestine,
and conveyed to their colonies in
dian Antiquities, vol. vi. p. 273, and
which represents a Phoenician coin, a
tree resembling the palm is depicted,
surrounded by the serpent, and stand-
ing between two stones below is an ;

other regions of the world and it is ; altar apparently to the sacred Triad."
probable that the Babylonians had the The Greek term for palm, Phcenix,
same. The other Mysteries were im- is also the designation of Phoenicia,
itations. —A. W. the land of palm trees and one title
;

'** Apuleius : The Golden Ass, ii. of the deity was Baal-Tamar, or Lord
xi. of the Palm. The designation appears
'"' Plutarch Symposiacs, viii. 4.
: to have been originally one of honor.
" The palm, never shedding its foliage. The royal shepherds of Egypt were
iscontinually adorned with the same called Phoenicians and Hellenes, and
green. This power of the tree men Phoenix is said to have come from
think agreeable to and fit for repre- Egypt to Tyre. It was originally a
senting victoi-y." title of men of rank, like the Anakim
"^ Gesnerius; table Ixxxiv. figs. 40, or Sons of Anak in Palestine, and the
43. Anax andron 'or king of men in the
Inman : Ancient Faiths Embodied Iliad. Bacchus is also called Ph-anax
illAncietit Names, ii. 448, 449. " On or Phoenician, the god of the palm,
ancient coins it figured largely alone. The use of the palm at triumphs was
orassociated with some female symbol, a testimony to royal, or at least, noble
It typified the male Creator, who was rank. A. W. —
represented as an upright stone, a pil- ''*''
Plutarch : Pythagorean Dia-
lar, a round tower, a tree stump, an logues. " The
Creator (Demiurgus)
oak-tree, a pine-tree, a maypole, a figuratively derived from the principle
spire, an obelisk, a minaret, and the of moisture (or the female principle)
like. . . In a curious drawing the nourishment of the sun, generated
which is copied from Maurice's In- existence and caloric."

305
 152 The Symbolical Language of

of the same form "° that prince having admitted many pro-
;

fane symbols among the ornaments of his sacred edifice. The

palm-tree at Deles, sacred to Apollo and Diana, is mentioned
in the Odyssey ; "' and it seems probable that the games and
other exercises performed in honor of those deities, in which
the palm, the laurel, and other symbolical plants were the dis-
tinctions of victory, were originally mystic representations of
the attributes and modes of action of the divine nature. Such
the dances unquestionably were for when performed in honor :

of the gods, they consisted chiefly of imitative exhibitions of

the symbolical figures, under which they were represented by
the artists."" Simple mimicry seems also to have formed a
part of the very ancient games celebrated by the lonians at
Delos,'"' from which, probably, came dramatic poetry the old ;

comedy principally consisting of imitations, not only of indi-

vidual men, but of the animals employed as symbols of the
Deity."" Of this kind are the comedies of the Birds, the Frogs,
the Wasps, etc. the choral parts of which were recited by per-
;

sons who were disguised in imitation of those different animals,

and who mimicked their notes while chanting or singing the
parts.'" From a passage of .iEschylus, preserved by Strabo, it
appears that similar imitations were practiced in the mystic
ceremonies,'" which may have been a reason for their gradual
disuse upon all common occasions.

BOXING A FEATURE OF THE MYSTIC WORSHIP.

202. The symbolical meaning of the olive, the fir, and the

"* PococKE : Travels in the East, the long-trained lonians are assembled
i. p. 217. in honor of thee, with their children
'*' Homer : Odyssey, vi. 162. " I and respected wives. They delight
saw such a young shoot of a palm thee with boxing, dancing, and song,
growing up in Delos near the altar of when they begin the contest. . . .
Apollo." The Delian girls, the servants of the
190 Plutarch Symposiacs, ix. 15,
: Far-Shooter, after they have first
" Dancing is made up of motion and chanted hymns to Apollo, and to Leto
manner, as a song is of sounds and and shaft-rejoicing Artemis, calling to
sobs. The motions they call phorai mind the heroes and heroines of old,
and the gestures and likeness to which sing an ode and charm the crowds of
the motions tend, they descriminate men. They ken how to imitate the
sebemata ; as for instance, when they voices and modulation of all ; so that
represent the figure of Apollo, Pan, or each man could say that he had him-
any of the BacchEe." self spoken, so beautiful an imitation
See also O'Brien : Round Towers had been made of them."
of Ireland, p. 237. The god had
" ""' See Aristophanes : Horses, line

compassion, and danced and the sun,

; 520.
moon and stars danced with him." "' Aristophanes Frogs, line 209.
:

Also Judges, '"'

xxi. ig-z'}. .iEschylijs : see Strabo, x. p.
""'
Homer: Hymn to Apollo. "There 721.

306
 Ancient Art and Mythology, 153

apples, the honorary rewards in the Olympic, Isthmian, and

Pythian games, has been already noticed and the parsley, ;

which formed the crown of the Roman victors, was equally a

mystic plant it being represented on coins in the same man-
;

ner as the iig-leaf, and with the same signification,'" probably

on account of a peculiar influence, which it is still supposed to
have upon the female constitution. This connection of the
games with the mystic worship was probably one cause of the
momentous importance attached to success in them which is ;

frequently spoken of by persons of the highest rank., as the

most splendid object of human ambition "" and we accord- ;

ingly find the proud city of Syracuse bribing a citizen of Cau-

lonia to renounce his own country and proclaim himself of
theirs, that they might have the glory of a prize which he had
obtained.'" When Exsenetus of Agrigentum won the race in
the ninety-second Olympiad, he was escorted into his native city
by three hundred chariots "' and Theagenes the Thasian, the
;

Achilles of his age, who long possessed unrivalled superiority

in all exercises of bodily strength and agility, so as to have
been crowned fourteen hundred times, was canonised as a hero
or demigod, had statues erected to him in various parts of
Greece, and received divine worship which he further proved;

himself worthy of, by miraculous favors obtained at his altars.

Euthymus, too, who was equally eminent as a boxer, having
won a great number of prizes, and contended once even against
Theagenes with doubtful success, was rewarded with equal or
even greater honors for he was deified by command of the
:

oracle even before his death "° being thus elevated to a rank,
;

which fear has often prostituted to power, but which unawed

respect gave to merit in this instance only and it is peculiarly ;

degrading to popular favor and flattery that in this instance it

should have been given not to the labors of a statesman or the
wisdom of a legislator, but to the dexterity of a boxer.

'The Psalm resounds, "8 DiODORUS SlCULUS : xiii. 82.

The Bull-voiced mimes striking terror with i99Ptttcv' v\\ At
^.''''"
mystic cries:
their „
Boxing, V'
•^ ir
being itselfa part otc^x.
^

the
..

With the drum an Echo

As of thunder under ground, is
Making aU things tremble."
'96 Hesychius: "Parsley,
ine."
"°
Plato The Republic, v. chap.
: All these exhibitions were religious
15. "That most blessed life which
those live who gain the Olympic
prizes."
See also Sophocles: Electra,
'" Pausanias: vi. 3.
produced, ancient worship, those who perished
;„ the contests were regarded as sacri-
the femin- fices to the gods, as probably were
those who perished by the gladiators.
rather than for diversion, solely or
principally. It must be remembered
that human victims were offered in
one form or another in Rome, Africa,
Asia, and Greece, till long after the
Christian Era.— A. W.
309
154 ^^^ Symbolical Language of

NOBLE QUALITIES CONSIDERED AS THE PRODUCT OF DIVINE

EMANATION.

203. This custom of canonising or deifying men seems to

have arisen from that general source of ancient rites and opin-
ions, the system of emanations, according to which all were
supposed to partake of the divine essence, but not in an equal
degree whence, while a few simple rites, faintly expressive
:

of religious veneration, where performed in honor of all the

dead,"" a direct and explicit worship was paid to the shades
of certain individuals renowned for either great virtues or great
vices, which, if equally energetic, equally dazzle and overawe
the gaping multitude.*" Everything being derived, accord-
ing to this system, from the Deity, the commanding talents
and splendid qualities of particular persons were naturally sup-
posed to proceed from particular emanations; whence such
persons were, even while living, honored with divine titles ex-
pressive of those particular attributes of the Deity, with which
they seemed to be peculiarly favored.*" Such titles were,
however, in many instances given soon after birth children ;

being named after the divine personifications, as a sort of con-

secration to their protection. The founder of the Persian
monarchy was called by a name, which in their language signi-
fied the sun °" and there is no doubt that many of the ancient
;

kings of iEgypt had names of the same kind,'" which have

helped to confound history with allegory although the Egyp- ;

tians, prior to their subjection to the Macedonians, never wor-

*<"'
Homer : Odyssey, x. 6. Hesychius. " The Persians say

»' Plutarch : Sentiments which *^' 5^™'

^^"™S " v '*'"• '''^fL f
j.n^ut.j Philosophers,
dehghted D!,;i„,^j,^, I.
: o
Z.
" tk^i^
Thales,
Kawlinson Herodotus, vi. Appen-
:

Pythagoras. Plato and the Stoics, con-

'
,•
Note A 'Tvni^
^°\^ ^,. ^^^^p rOld^^^°- Persian
Z''-
sider the demons to be psychical be-
^"™*-) ^liis word was generally
,

ings that the heroes are souls separa-

s"P?°=ed by the Greeks to mean he
;

.*;%" ^"^ "ifntified with the

ted from the bodies ; some are good f''
"•

and some bad : the good, the iood |^"^."" ^end Hware, modern
^^P"^' "°^ suspected
souls, and the bad. those whose souls f^"ff°'
^/'«%
^\.
'^
that this identification was a mistake,
are worthless."
as the old Persian A never replaces
"" Pindar Nemea. :
"^^ Sanscrit S. The name is more
" One race of men, one of gods- properly compared with the Sanscrit
From one mother we both breathe, Kuru, which was a popular title
All power is held separated." among the Aryan race before the se-
BD, D
«„„„,.„ Perstca •
<i 1^1, 1 paration of the Median and Persian
«»»Ctesias : They took
i.

£,.,„,hes. but of which the etymology

oj
his name from the sun. • , ,.
j
•= •^^known.
Plutarch: Artaxerxes. "The
Persians call the sun Cyrus." '"'
Jablonski : Pantheon of Egypt

.UO
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 155

shipped them, nor any heroes or canonised mortals what-

soever.'"

NAMES OF GODS CONFERRED UPON DISTINGUISHED MEN.

204. "During the Pagan state of the Irish," says a learned

antiquary of that country, " every child at his birth received a
-name generally from some imaginary divinity under whose ;

protection it was supposed to be but this name was seldom re- :

tained longer than the state of infancy from which period it ;

was generally changed for others arising from some perfection

or imperfection of the body ; the disposition or quality of the
mind achievements in war or the chase the place of birth,
; ;

residence, etc." '" When these descriptive titles exactly ac-

corded with those previously imposed, and derived from the
personified attributes of the Deity, both were naturally con-
founded, and the limited excellences of man thus occasionally
placed in the same rank with the boundless perfections of God.
The same custom still prevails among the Hindus, who, when
a child is ten days old, give him the name of one of their
Deities, to whose favor they think by this means to recom-
mend him '" whence the same medley of historical tradition
;

and physical allegory fills up their popular creed, as filled

that of the Greeks and other nations. The ancient theism of
the North seems also to have been corrupted by the conqueror
Odin assuming the title of the supreme CJod, and giving those
of other subordinate attributes to his children and captains; '"
which are, however, all occasionally applied to him "'' for the :

Scandinavians, like the Greeks, seem sometimes to have joined,

and sometimes to have separated the personifications so that ;

they sometimes worshipped several gods, and sometimes only

one god with several names.
205. Historical tradition has transmitted to us accounts of
several ancient kings, who bore the Greek name of Jupiter;"*

»» Herodotus, 50. " The Egyp-

ii
XfSi,^^^L7St^^^i^
tians pay no divme honot: to heroes. Vacus et Skilfingus,
See also §§ 142, 143. Va/odas et Hooj/ta-iyr
Gautus et lalcus inter Deos,
'"^ Collectan. Hibem. No. xi. p. Ossier et Sua/iter,
250, Quos puta factor esse
f^" Omnes ex una me.
""Sonnerat: Voyas'e
-^ •^
aux Indies, am n »^
'p J g
'
*'" Pausanias : Messina, xxxiu. 2.
'
'
/V The names of the individuals in the
™8 Mallet: Introd. a VHist. de Hebrew Scriptures were often designa-
Daneman. tions of the Supreme Being espe-
™3 Edd. S^mon
Grunnistnal,
: liii. cially those of the Book of Genesis.
;

—
^tfzwKj ego nunc nominor A. W,
3"
 ;
156 The Symbolical Language of
which signifying Awe or Terror, would naturally be assumed
by tyrants, who wished to inspire such sentiments. The an-
cient Bacchus was said to have been the son of Jupiter by
Ceres or Proserpina '" that is, in plain language, the result
;
of the aethereal spirit operating upon the Earth, or its pervad-
ing Heat : but a real or fictitious hero, having been honored
with his name in the Cadmeian colony of Thebes, was by de-
grees confounded with him in the popular mythology, and
fabled to have been raised up by Jupiter to replace him after
he had been slain by the Titans; as Atys and Adonis were
*" DiODOEUS SicuLUS : iii. " They
say that the god, the offspring of Zeus
and Demeter, was torn to pieces." De-
meter and not Proserpina was men-
tioned by older writers.
Arrian : ii. " The Athenians wor-
ship Dionysus, the son of Zeus and
—
Kore that other Dionysus and the ;
lacchus of the Mysteries, this Diony-
sus and not the Theban one, is cele-
brated with chanting." Mr. Knight
aptly remarks that " an Attic writer
during the independence of the Re-
public would not have dared to say
so much." But the introduction of
Macedonian influence had had its
full effect when Arrian wrote
and the ;
Orphic rites were superseding the
Eleusinian. Hence the appeal of
Nonnus Dionysiacs, xxxi.
;
" Let not Athens hymn the new Bacchus
;
Let him not obtain honor like the Eleusi-
nian Bacchus
Let him not change the mysteries of the
former Bacchus,
Nor dishonor the basket of the autumnal
fruits of Demeter."
DiODORUS SiCULUS: iv. p. 148.
" Certain mythologists narrate that
there had been another Dionysus born,
much more venerable in time than
this one. They say that Dionysus was
the son of Zeus and Persephone, and
that some also named him Sfebazius ;
whose birth, sacriiices, nocturnal wor-
ship and hidden rites, they introduce
to the attention because of shame at
the unlimited intercourse which fol-
lows."
Plutarch: Symposiacs, iv. 6. "I
thinlc that the festival of the Sabbath
is not wholly without relation to the
festival ofDionysus. Even now, many
call the Bacchi by the designation of
Sabbi ; and this very word is uttered
when celebrating the Orgies of the
312
"'''
god. One might say that the name
was derived from a certain sobesis or
pompous movement which character-
ises those celebrating the Bacchic
rites."
"-
Nonnus : Dionysiacs, v.
** Zeus, who reigns on high, desires to rear
Another Bacchus, the copy of old Diony-
sus, bull-formed.
Unfortunate Zagreus, still loved.
Whom Persephoneia brought forth to the
dracontian bed of Zeus."
The Orphic legend which is here
cited,makes Dionysus-Zagreus the son
of Zeus or Jupiter, begotten by him in
the form of the sacred Dragon upon
Kore, said by some to be his daughter
by Ceres or Demeter, and by others to
be Demeter herself. Nonnus adopts
the former idea and styles her Kore-
Persephoneia. Zeus had destined this
child for King of Heaven, and placed
him in charge of Apollo and the Cure-
tes, the ancient priest-caste of Greece,
Crete, and Phrygia. But the Titans,
incited by Hera, disguised themselves
under a coat of plaster, and finding the
child examining a mirror, attacked him
and tore him into seven pieces. Pal-
las-Athena rescued his heart which
Zeus swallowed, and thus received
again into himself the soul of the
child, to be born anew in the person
of the second Dionysus, the son of
Semele. It is easy to perceive from
this legend the doctrine of metem-
psychosis or transmigration of souls,
which was a part of the Orphic and
Pythagorean doctrines, and doubtless
came from the East. E. Pococke uses
this story to illustrate his idea of an
ancient Lama-hierarchy in Greece of
which Zeus was the chief-pontiff. Za-
greus or Chakras (universal sovereign)
his son by Kore-Persephoneia (or
Parasou-pani Durga). his contemplated
,^-^<?-5ffj3^c^_^^C^gg,

Leda and Jupiter as a Swan.

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 157

by the Boar, and Osiris by Typhon symbolical tales which ;

have been already noticed. The mystic deity was however

duly distinguished as an object of public worship in the
temples where he was associated by the Greeks with Ceres
;

and Proserpina,*" and by the Romans with Ceres and Libera

(who was their Proserpina), the reason for which, as the Stoic
interlocutor observes in Cicero's Dialogue on the Nature of the
Gods, was explained in the Mysteries.'"

CONFUSION OF PERSONAGES AND OF THE ALLEGORIES.

206. The sons of Tyndarus, Castor and Pollux, were by the

same means confounded with the ancient personifications of
the diurnal and nocturnal sun, or of the morning and evening
star; '" the symbols of whose attributes, the two oval or conical
caps, were interpreted to signify their birth from Leda's ^%%, a
fable engrafted upon the old allegory subsequent to the Ho-
meric times the four lines alluding to the deification of the
;

brothers of Helen in the Odyssey being undoubtedly spurious

though extremely beautiful."" Perseus is probably an entirely
fictitious and allegorical personage; for there is no mention ot
him in either of the Homeric poems; and his name is a title
of the sun,"' and his image the composite symbol of the grif-
fin humanised. Theseus appears likewise to be a personage

successor, having been murdered by means evidently, even if it means no

the Titans was born again and made more, that the several rites observed in
the heir-apparent (India in Greece, Phrygia and Asia, purporting to be
xvii. pp. 265, 265). A. W. — originally from Samothrace, were sub-
*''
Pausanias: ^«zVa. "The temple stantially identical. The Grecian
of Demeter is near by She and the : myth of Jupiter and Leda is but an-
Daughter having statues, and lacchus other version of the legend. Leda is
a torch." These seem to have been the Mother Goddess, and brings forth
the Cabeiri. to Tyndarus the Flame-God, or to
Clement of Alexandria: "The Zeus the lord of ffither, Castor, the
Demeter of Praxitiles, and Kore and Sun or Morning-star, Polydeukes, the
the lacchus of the Mysteries." Evening-star, and Helene or Selene,
»'* Cicero : The Nature of the the Moon.— A. W.
Gods, iii. 21. *" Homer : Odyssey, xi. " The
"' Sextus Empiricus ix. 37.
: spurious passage (written by the inter-
" They say that the Tyndaridae (Cas- polator with the F or digamma, shows
tor and Pollux) succeed to the glory that " both of these the fruitful earth
of the Dioscuri who were formerly re- detains alive who, even beneath the
;

garded as gods." earth, having honor from Zeus, some-

The Dioscuri were originally Phce- times live on alternate days, and some-
nician divinities, the patrons of art and times again are dead, and they have
commerce. In Sanchoniathon, they are obtained by lot honor equally with the
thus described " To Sydyc (Tzadec)
: [Cabeirian] gods."
were born the Dioscuri, or Cabeiri, or '" Scholiast oti Lycophron :
" Per-
Corybantes, or Samothracians they ; sens, the Sun."
first invented the mystic ship." This

317
158 The Symbolical Language of

who between the respective ages of the two

started into being
Homeric poems; there being no mention of him in the genuine
parts of the Iliad, though the Athenian genealogy is minutely
detailed; '" and he being only once slightly mentioned as the
lover of Ariadne in the genuine parts of the Odyssey.™ He
seems, in reality, to be the Athenian personification of Hercu-
les; he having the same symbols of the club and the lion's
skin and similar actions and adventures being attributed to
;

him, many of which are manifestly allegorical such as his ;

conflict with the Minotaur, with the Centaurs, and with the
Amazons.

MEN BEGOTTEN BY DIVINE WITHOUT HUMAN AGENCY.

207. This confusion of personages, arising from a confusion

of names, was facilitated in its progress by the belief that the
universal generative principle, or its subordinate emanations,
might act in such a manner as that a female of the human
species might be impregnated without the co-operation of a
male;°^° and as this notion was extremely useful and conven-
ient in concealing the frailties of women, quieting the jealousies
of husbands, protecting the honor of families, and guarding
with religious awe the power of bold usurpers, it was naturally
cherished and promoted with much favor and industry. Men
supposed to be produced in this supernatural way, would of
course advance into life with strong confidence and high ex-
pectations; which generally realise their own views, when sup-
ported by even common courage and ability. Such were the
founders of almost all the families distinguished in mytho-
logy; whose names being, like all other ancient names, de-
scriptive titles, they were equally applicable to the personified
attributes of the Deity whence both became blended together,
:

*" Homer : Iliad, ii. 546-550. pugnant unchangeable nature of

to the
«'» Homer: Odyssey, xi. "Fair the deity. . But I take heart again
.

Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, whom when I hear Plato call the eternal and
Theseus once led from Crete to the unbegotten deity the Father and
soil of sacred Athens but he did not
;
Creator of the universe and all other
enjoy her, for Artemis slew her in the begotten things not as if he parted
:

island Dia, on account of the testi- with any sperm, but as if by his power
mony of Dionysus." l^s implanted a generative principle in
*™ Plutarch : Symfosiacs, viii. i. matter, which acts upon, forms, and
" It is very fit that we should apply fashions it. It seems no incredible
that to Plato :
thing that the Deity, though not after
•He seemed not sprung from mortal man, *« ts.ih\on of a man, but by some
but God.' other certain communication hlls and
But for my part, I apprehend that to impregnates a mortal nature with a
beget, as well as to be begotten, is re- divine principle."
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 159

and historical so mixed with allegorical fable, that it is impos-

sible in many
instances to distinguish or separate them. The
actions of kings and conquerors were attributed to personages
purely symbolical and the qualities of these bestowed in re-
;

turn upon frail and perishable mortals. Even the double or

ambiguous sex was attributed to deified heroes Cecrops being ;

fabled to have been both man and woman °'' and the rough ;

Hercules and furious Achilles represented with the features

and habits of the softer sex, to conceal the mystic meaning of
which the fables of Omphale and lole, and the daughters of
Lycomedes, were invented, of which there is not a trace in the
Homeric poems.

ASSUMING FOREIGN DEITIES IDENTICAL WITH THOSE WOR-

SHIPPED AT HOME.

208. When the Greeks made expeditions into distant coun-

tries and there found
either for plunder, trade, or conquest,
deified heroes corresponding either in sound or
with titles
sense to their own, they without further enquiry concluded
them to be the same; and adopted all the legendary tales
which they found with them whence their own mythology,
;

both religious and historical, was gradually spread out into an

unwieldy mass of incoherent fictions and traditions, that no
powers of ingenuity or extent of learning could analyse or
comprehend. The heroes of the Iliad were, at a very early
period,so much the objects of public admiration, partly
through the greatness of the war, the only one carried on
jointly the States of Greece prior to the Macedonian
by all
usurpation, and partly through the refulgent splendor of the
mighty genius by which it had been celebrated, that the
proudest princes were ambitious of deducing their genealogies
from them, and the most powerful nations vain of any traces
of connection with them. Many such claims and pretensions
were of course fabricated, which were as easily asserted as
denied; and as men have a natural partiality for affirmatives,
and nearly as strong a predilection for that which exercises

'-'
Justin ii. 6.
: See also Suidas, sexed. Venus with a beard, or stand-
Eusebius, Jerome, Plutarch, Eusta- ing on the tortoise, denoted the same
thius, and Diodorus. idea and it is hinted in the first and
;

This assertion can hardly be correct. fifth chapters of the Book of Genesis ;
The heroes were but the heris or dei- " in the likeness of God made he him
;

ties themselves in the manifestation male and female created he them,

denominated by the Hindus avatars and called their name Adam." —A.
and such were represented double- W.
323
 ;

i6o The Sytnbolical Language of

their credulity, as for that which gratifies their vanity, we may

conclude that the asserters generally prevailed. Their tales
were also rendered plausible, in many instances, by the various
traditions then circulated concerning the subsequent fortunes
and adventures of those heroes some of whom were said to
;

have been cast away in their return, and others expelled by

usurpers, who had taken advantage of their long absence; so
that a wandering life supported by piracy and plunder became
the fate of many."" Inferences were likewise drawn from the
slenderest traces of verbal analogies and the general similarity
of religiotis rites, which, as they co-operated in proving what
men were predisposed to believe, were admitted without sus-
picion or critical examination.

OLD PRACTICE OF NAMING PLACES NEWLY-DISCOVERED AND

THE CONFUSION RESULTING.

209. But what contributed most of all towards peopling the coasts
and islands both of the Mediterranean and adjoining ocean, with
illustrious fugitives of that memorable period, was the practice of an-
cient navigators in giving the names of gods and heroes to the lands
7cihich they discovered, in the same manner as the moderns do
those of the saints and martyrs for in those early ages every
:

name thus given became the subject of a fable, because the

name continued when those who gave it were forgotten. In
modern times every navigator keeps a journal which, if it ;

contains any new or important information, is printed and

made public so that, when a succeeding navigator finds any
:

traces of European language or manners in a remote country,

he knows from whence they came but, had there been no nar-
:

ratives left by the first modern discoverers, and subsequent

adventurers had found the names of St. Francis or St. Anthony
with some faint traces of Christianity in any of the islands of
the Pacific Ocean, they might have concluded, or at least con-
jectured, that those saints had actually been there: whence the
first convent of monks, that arose in a colony, would soon

make out a complete history of their arrival and abode there

the hardships which they endured, the miracles which they
wrought, and the relics which they left for the edification of
the faithful, and the emolument of their teachers.
210. As the heroes of the Iliad vftrt as familiar to the Greek
navigators, as the saints of the Calendar were to the Spanish
and Portuguese, and treated by them with the same sort of re-
*''^
Stkabo : iii. p. 150.

324
 Ancient Art and Mythology. i6i

spect and veneration, there can be little doubt that they left
the same sort of memorials of them, wherever they made dis-
coveries or piratical settlements which memorials, being after-
;

ward found among barbarous nations by succeeding navi-

gators, when the discoverers where forgotten and the settlers
vanished, they concluded that those heroes had actually been
there and as the works of the Greek poets, by the general
:

diffusion of the Greek language after the Macedonian con-

quest, became universally known and admired, those nations
themselves eagerly co-operated in the deception by engrafting
the Greek fables upon their own, and greedily catching at any
links of affinity which might connect them with a people, from
whom all that was excellent in art, literature, and society,
seemed to be derived.

JACOB BRYANT CRITICISED.

211. Hence, in almost every country bordering upon the

Mediterranean Sea, and even in some upon the Atlantic Ocean,
traces were to be found of the navigations and adventures of
Ulysses, Menelaus, .^Eneas, or some other wandering chieftain
of that age by which means such darkness and confusion
;

have been spread over their history, that an ingenious writer,

not usually given to doubt, has lately questioned their exist-
ence not recollecting that he might upon the same grounds
;

have questioned the existence of the Apostles, and thus under-

mine the very fabric which he professed to support for by :

quoting, as of equal authority, all the histories which have

been written concerning them in various parts of Christendom
during seventeen hundred years, he would have produced a
medley of inconsistent facts, which, taken collectively, would
have startled even his own well-disciplined faith."' Yet this
is what he calls a fair mode of analysing ancient profane his-

tory and, indeed, it is much fairer than that which he has

;

practiced: for not content with quoting Homer and Tzetzes,

*" Metodorus of Lampsacus an-
ciently turned both the Homeric
poems into allegory ; and the Christ-
ian writers of the third and fourth
centuries did the same by the histori-
cal books of the New Testament ; as
their predecessors the Eclectic Jews
had before done by those of the
Old.
Metrodorus and his followers, how-
ever, never denied nor even questioned
the general fact of the siege of Troy
(as they have been mis-stated to have
done), any more than Tatian and Ori-
gen did the incarnation of their Re-
deemer, or Aristeas and Philo the pas-
sage of the Red Sea.
Tasso in his later days declared the
whole of his Jerusalem Delivered to be
an allegory ; but without, however
questioning the historical truth of the
crusades.

325
 ;;

1 62 The Symbolical Language of

as of equal authority, he has entirely rejected the testimony

of Thucydides in his account of the ancient population of
Greece; and received in its stead that of Cedrenus, Sj'ncelius,
and the other monkish writers of the lower ages, who com-
piled the Paschal and Nuremberg Chronicles. It is rather hard
upon our countrymen, Chaucer and Lydgate, to be excluded
as the latter would have furnished an account of the good king
Priam's founding a chauntry in Troy to sing requiems for the
soul of his pious son Hector, with many other curious par-
ticulars equally unknown to the antiquaries of Athens and
Alexandria, though full as authentic as those which he has
collected with so mucli labor from the Byzantine luminaries
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.'"
212. A conclusion- directly contrary to that of this ingen-
ious gentleman was drawn by several learned writers of anti-
quity, from the confusion in which the traditions of early
times were involved. Instead of turning history into mytho-
logy, they turned mythology into history and inferred that, ;

because some of the objects of public worship had been mortal

men, they had all been equally so; for which purpose, the}'
rejected the authority of the Mysteries, where the various
gradations of gods, daemons, and heroes, with all the meta-
physical distinctions of emanated, personified, and canonised
beings, were taught;'" and, instead of them, brought out the
old allegorical genealogies in a new dress, under pretense of
their having been transcribed from authentic historical monu-
ments of extreme antiquity found in some remote country.

EUHEMERUS, SANCHONIATHON, AND EUSEBIUS ACCUSED OF FRAUD-

ULENTLY SOLVING MYTHS AS HISTORICAL EVENTS.

213. Euhemerus, a Messenian employed under Cassander,

king of Macedonia, seems to have been the first who attempted
this kind of fraud. Having been sent into the Eastern Ocean
with some commission, he pretended to have found engraven
upon a column in an ancient temple in the island of Panchsea,
a genealogical account of a family that had once reigned there
in which were comprised the principal deities then worshipped
by the Greeks.'" The theory, which he formed from this pre-

'" See Bryant : Ancient Mytho- and manifestations of the truth con-
logy. cerning the demons, let me keep silent,
'" Plutarch : Failure of the Ora- as Herodotus says."
cles, 14. " Asthe Mysteries and
to '-* EusEBius Praparatio Evange-
:

secret observances, by which we re- lica, ii. 2.

ceive the most vivid representations Plutarch : Tsis and Osiris, 23
326
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 163

tended discovery, was soon after attempted to be more full}-

established by a Phcenician History, said to have been compiled
many centuries before by one Sanchoniathon from the records
of Thoth and Amun, but never brought to light until Philo of
Byblos published it in Greek with a prooem of his own in ;

which he asserted that the Mysteries had been contrived merely

to disguise the tales of his pretended Fhanician History™ not-
withstanding that a great part of these tales are evidently
nothing more than the old mystic allegories copied with little
variation from the theogonies of the Greek poets, in which
they had before been corrupted and obscured.
214. A fragment of this work having been preserved by
Eusebius, many learned persons among the moderns have
quoted it with implicit confidence, as a valuable and authentic
record of very ancient history while others have as confidently
;

rejected it, as a bungling fraud imposed upon the public by

Philo of Byblos, in order to support a system, or procure
money from the founders of the Alexandrian Library who ;

paid such extravagant prices for old books, or for (what served
equally well to furnish their shelves) new books with old titles.
Among the ancients there seems to have been but one opinion
concerning it for, except Porphyry, no heathen writer has
;

deigned to mention it so contemptible a performance, as the

;

" I fear that this would be to stir
things that are not to be stirred, and
to declare war not only, as Simonides
says, against length of time, but also
against many nations and families of
mankind, whom a pious veneration
toward these deities holds fast bound,
like men astonished and amazed.
This would be nothing else than go-
ing about to remove so great and
venerable names from heaven to earth ;
thus shaking and dissolving that re-
verence and persuasion that hope en-
tered into the hearts of all men from
their very birth; and opening the
great double-barred gates to the athe-
istic party who convert all divine mat-
ters into human, giving a conspicuous
sea-captains,and kings, whom he as-
sumes to have lived in the more re-
cent and ancient periods, and to have
been so recorded in golden characters
in Panchaia, a country which no Bar-
barian, nor Greek ever saw, except
Euhemerus alon-e, who pretends to
have sailed into those regions of the
earth never before known, because the
Panchaians and Triphyllians never
existed."
''^ SANCHONIATHON, or Philo Bybli-
us, as quoted by Eusebius: Prapara-
tio Evangelica, i. g. " But the most
recent of the sacred Writers withheld
the literal accounts of the occurrences
happening from the beginning, and
wove them into allegories and legends ;

place to the impostures of Euhemerus, and having established a certain rela-

the Messenian, who out of his own
mind prepared a rescript of incredible
and imaginary fable, and thus sowed
disbelief in the gods broadcast in the
world. This he did by describing
those heretofore regarded as divinities
under the style of military leaders,
tionship between them and the varied
experiences of this life, they instituted
the Mysteries, and afterward raised a
great smoke around them, so that one
might not easily apprehend their sense
correctly."

329
164 The Symbolical Language of

fragment extant proves it to have been, seeming to them un

worthy of being rescued from oblivion even by an epithet of
scorn or sentence of reprobation. The early Christian writers,
however, took it under their protection, because it favored
that system which, by degrading the old, facilitated the prog-
ress of the new religion but in whatever else these writers
;

may have excelled, they certainly had no claim to excellence

in either moral sincerity or critical sagacity; and none less
than Eusebius, who, though his authority has lately been pre-
ferred to that of Thucydides and Xenophon, was so dififerently
thought of by ecclesiastical writers of the immediately subse-
quent ages, that he is one of those by whose example they
justified the practice of holy lying,''" or asserting that which
they knew to be false in support of that which they believed to
be true.

THE SPURIOUS LETTER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO HIS

MOTHER.

215. Among
the numberless forgeries of greater moment
which poured upon the world, is one in favor of
this practice
this system, written in the form of a letter from Alexander
the Great to his mother, informing her that an Egyptian priest
named Leo had him that all the gods were deified
secretly told
mortals. Both the and manner of it are below criticism
style ;

it being in every respect one of the most bungling counterfeits

ever issued from the great manufactory of falsehoods, which

was carried on under the avowed patronage of the leading
members of the Church, during the second, third, and fourth
centuries."" Jablonski only wasted his erudition in exposing
it ;
"°
though Warburton, whose multifarious reading never
gave him any of the tact or taste of a scholar, has employed
all his acuteness and all his virulence in its defense."'

DISGRACEFUL APOTHEOSES OF ANCIENT EMPERORS.

216. The facility and rapidity with which deifications weie

multiplied under the Macedonian and Roman empires, gave
considerable credit to the system of Euhemerus, and brought

'*'
Jerome : Against Jovinian. Athenagoras in his Apology; thus
^'^
Jerome: Against Jovinian, showing that it was extant in the
Chrysostoni : De Sacerdotibus. Tliird Century of the Christian Era.
tso
Prolegomena. It is alluded to by *'' Warbuton : Divine Legation, i.

330
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 165

proportionate disgrace on religion in general. The many

worthless tyrants, whom their own preposterous pride or the
abject servility of their subjects exalted into gods, would nat-
urally be pleased to hear that the universally-recognised
objects of public worship had no better title to the homage
and devotion of mankind than they themselves had and when ;

an universal despot could enjoy the honors of a god, at the

same time that consciousness of his crimes prevented him from
daring to enter a mystic temple, it is natural that he should
prefer that system of religion which decorated him with its
highest honors, to that which excluded him from its only sol-
emn rites.'"

THE "elementary SYSTEM," AS FOUND IN HOMER AND OTHER

POETS.

This system had also another great advantage: for as

217.
all persons acquainted with the mystic doctrines were strictly
bound to secresy, they could not of course engage in any con-
troversy on the subject otherwise they might have appealed
;

to the testimony of the poets themselves, the great corrupters

and disguisers of their religion who, nevertheless, upon all
;

great and solemn occasions, such as public adjurations and in-

vocations, resort to its first principles, and introduce no fabu-
lous or historical personages not that they understood the
;

mystic doctrines, or meant to reveal them, but because they

followed the ordinary practice of the earliest times, which in
matters of such solemn importance was too firmly established
to be altered. When Agamemnon calls upon the gods to
attest and confirm his treaty with Priam, he gives a complete
abstract of the old elementary system, upon which the mystic
was founded naming first the awful and venerable Father of all
;

then the Sun, who superintends and regulates the Universe, and lastly
the subordinate diffusionsof the great active Spirit that pervade the
waters, the earth, and the regions under the earth."^ The invoca-
tion of the Athenian women, who are introduced by Aristo-
phanes celebrating the Thesmophoria, or secret rites of Ceres,,
is to the same effect, only adapted to the more complicated and

philosophical refinements of the mystic worship. First they

call upon Zeus, the supreme all-ruling Spirit ; then upon the golden-
lyred Apollo, or the Sun, the harmoniser and regulator of the world,,
the centre and instrument of his power ; then upon Almighty Pallas,

"' Suetonius : Nero. *'' Homer : Iliad, iii.

 ;

1 66 The Symbolical Language of

or the pure emanation of his wisdom j then upon Artemis, or Nature,

the many-named daughter of Leto or Night ; then upon Poseidon, or
the emanation of the pervading Spirit that animates the waters j and
lastly upon the Nymphs or subordinate generative ministers of both sea
and land!'''' Other invocations to the same purport are to be
found in many of the choral odes both tragic and comic;
though the order in which tlie personifications are introduced
is often varied, to prevent the mystic allusions from being too
easily discernible. The principles of theology appear to have
been kept equally pure from the superstructures of mythology
in the forms of judicial adjuration; Draco having enacted
that all solemn depositions should be under the sanction of
Jupiter, Poseidon, and Athene,'" whilst in later times Demeter
was joined to the two former instead of Athene.""

THE "SYRIAN GODDESS," AND HER PECULIAR WORSHIP.

2x8. The great Pantheic temples exhibited a similar pro-

gression or graduation of personified attributes and emana-
tions in the statues and symbols which decorated them. Many
of these existed in various parts of the Macedonian and Roman
empires; but none are now so well known as that of Hierapo-
lis, or the holy city in Syria, concerning which we have a parti-

cular treatise attributed to Lucian. It was called the temple

of the Syrian goddess Atar-gatis or Astarte who was the same ;

as the Rhea, Cybele, or Universal Mother of the Phrygians

whose attributes have been already explained, and may be
found more regularly detailed in a speech of Mopsus in the
Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.'" " She was," as Appian
observes, " by some called Hera, by others Venus, and by
others held to be Nature, or the First cause which produced the
beginnings and seeds of things from seminal humidity; " "*' so
that she comprehended in one personification both these god-
desses; who were accordingly sometimes blended in one sym-
bolical figure by the very ancient Greek artists.'^"
219. Her statue at Hierapolis was of composite form, so
as to signify many attributes like those of the Ephesian Diana,
Berekynthian Mother, and others of the kind."" It was placed

*'* Aristophanes : The Thesmo- ''' Pausanias : iii. " The Lacon-
fhoriazousa, line 365. ians call the ancient figures of Aphro-
'^^ Scholiast on Iliad, xv. dite, Hera."
"'Demosthenes: Km Tiiioxp. Strabo : v. "The Tyrrhenians
*" Apollonius Rhodius i. 1098. : call the Hera, Kupra," or AphroditS.
838Appian De Bella Parthico.
:
*"> Lucian : De Dea Syria. " It
See also PLUTARCH Crassus.
: has the characteristics of Pallas-Athe-
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 167

in the interior part of the temple, accessible

only to priests of
the higher order; and near it was the statue of the corre-
sponding male personification, called by the Greek writers
Zeus ; which was borne by bulls, as that of the goddess was
by lions,"' to the active power or asthereal
signify that
spirit is sustained by its own strength alone while the pas- ;

sive or terrestrial requires the aid of previous destruction. The

Minotaur and Sphinx, before explained, are only more com-
pendious ways of representing these composite symbols.

THE MYSTERIOUS THIRD ONE.

220. Between them was a third figure with a golden dove

on its head, which the Syrians did not choose to explain, or
call by any name; but which some supposed to be Bacchus,
others Deucalion, and others Semiramis.'" It must, therefore,
have been an androgynous figure; and most probably signi-
fied the first-begotten Love, or plastic emanation, which pro-
ceeded from both, and was consubstantial with both whence ;

he was called by the Persians, who seem to have adopted

him from the Syrians, Mithras, signifying the Mediator.**'^ The

na, Venus-Aphrodite, Luna, Rhea, Ar- others Semiramis." It is called the

temis, Nemesis, and the Fates." sign.
*" LuciAN : " Both are represented *<3 Plutarch :Ins and Ositis, 45,
as sitting, and are made of gold. Hera 46. *'
Nature produces nothing but
is carried by lions, and he by bulls." what mixed and tempered.
is .

" She is evidently the same as Rhea,
for lions support her, and she carries
a tabor or drum in her hand, and a
tower on her head, as the Lydians re-
present Rhea or Cybele."
" The symbol is of Zeus
robes, and chair are enough
sire no other resemblance."
The figure, it will be seen,
Tyrian,
and indeed, the same as that on
is,
the Phoenician medal with the Bull's
head on the chain. Seen also on the
silver coins of Alexander the Great,
If nothing can come without a cause,
and if a good thing can not afford a
cause of evil, Nature then must cer-
tainly have a peculiar source and ori-
gin of evil as well as of good. This
; the head, is the opinion of the greatest and wis-
;we de- est of mankind. Some believe that
there are two Deities, as though it
is were rival architects, one of whom
they regard as the creator of good
things, and the other of the bad.
Some call the better one of them GoD
and the other D^MON as doth Zo- ;

Seleucus I., Antiochus IV., etc. roaster the Magian, whom they assert
It was therefore the same figure as to have lived five thousand years be-
that on the Phoenician medal with the fore the Trojan war. This Zoroaster
bull's head on the chair and which is; called the one of these Oromasd, and
repeated with slight variations on the the other Ahriman ; and affirmed that
silver coins of Alexander the Great, the former as to things perceptible to
Seleucus I., Antiochus IV., etc. the senses, must resemble light, and
"''
LuciAN De Dea Syria, 16.
: the other, darkness and ignorance ;

"Not only is no name given to it, but also that Mithras was of a nature
they say nothing concerning the origin between the two. For this reason the
or form. Some suppose it to be Persians call Mithras the mediator."
Dionysus, others, Deucalion, and Mithras is the old Persian title of
335
1 68 The Symbolical Language of

doubt expressed concerning the sex proves that the body of

the figure was covered, as well as the features effeminate and ;

it is peculiarly remarkable that such a figure as this with a

golden dove on its head should have been taken for Deuca-
lion of whom corresponding ideas must of course have been
;

entertained whence we are led to suspect that the fabulous

:

histories of this personage are not derived from any vague

traditions of the universal deluge, but from some symbolical
composition of the plastic spirit upon the waters, which was
signified so many various ways in the emblematical language
of ancient art. The infant Perseus floating in an ark or box
with his mother, is probably from a composition' of the same
kind, Isis and Horus being represented enclosed in this man-
ner on the mystic or Isiac hands '" and the Egyptians, as be-
;

fore observed, representing the sun in a boat instead of a

chariot from which boat being carried in procession upon
;

men's shoulders, as it often appears in their sculptures, and

being ornamented with symbols of Amun taken from the
ram, probably arose the fable of the Argonautic expedition ;

of which there is not a trace in the genuine parts of either of

the Homeric poems.*" The Colchians indeed were supposed
to be a colony of Egyptians,'" and it is possible that there
might be so much truth in the story, as that a party of Greek
pirates carried off a golden figure of the symbol of their god ;

but had it been an expedition of any splendor or impor-

tance, it certainly would have been noticed in the repeated
mention that is made of the heroes said to have been concerned
in it.

221. The supreme Triad, thus represented at Hierapolis,

assumed different forms and names in different mystic tem-

the Sun-God, or more correctly, as Minor, Egypt, and other countries,

will K
be seen in \!cve, hordah-Avesta, of after the conquest of Pontus by Pom-
the herald, who goes before and an- pey and we find it an element in the-
;

nounces the coming of the Sun, like Gnostic systems and other mystic doc-
the Aswins. He is the first of the trines, after the Christian era.
^^ La Chausse Roman Museum,
A. W. —
Izeds or Yasatas, the Lord, whose :

long arms grasp what is in Eastern vol. plates II, 13.

ii.

India and smite that which is in West- '^^ The

ern India (Susiana and Babylonia,
where Ahriman and Zohak ruled),
what is on the steppes or prairies of
Ranha (the Amou), and what is at the
end of the land (by the Southern
Ocean). The name does not appear
to have been borrowed from any west-
ern people, whether Ethiopic or She-
mitic but it was carried over Asia
;
reference to Jason and the
ship Argo {Odyssey, xii. 69-72), are
supposed to have been interpolated,
"' Herodotus : ii 104. Despite
Mr. Knight's speciousness, the ethnic
and social, as well as the religious
affiliations of the Colchians, show them
to have been a Hamitic and probably
Egyptian people,
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 169

pies. In that of Samothrace it appeared in three celebrated

statues of Scopas, called Venus or Aphrodite, Pothos and
Phaethon,"" or Nature, Attraction, and Light °" and at ;

Upsal in Sweden, by three figures equally symbolical, called

Odin, Freya, and Thor the first of which comprehended the
;

attributes of Jupiterand Mars, the second those of Juno and

Venus, and the third those of Hercules and Bacchus, together
with the thunder of Jupiter for Thor, as mediator between
;

heaven and earth, had the general command of this terrestrial

atmosphere.'" Among the Chinese sects, which have retained
or adopted the symbolical worship, a triple personification of
one godhead is comprehended in the goddess Pussa, whom
they represent sitting upon the lotus, called, in that country,
Lin, and with many arms, carrying different symbols, to sig-
nify the various operations of universal nature. similar A
union of attributes was expressed in the Scandinavian god-
dess Isa or Disa who in one of her personifications appeared
;

riding upon a ram accompanied with music, to signify, like

Pan, the principle of universal harmony and, in another, ;

upon a goat, with a quiver of arrows at her back, and ears of

corn in her hand, to signify her dominion over generation,
vegetation, and destruction.'" Even in the remote islands of
the Pacific Ocean, which appear to have been peopled from
the Malay shores, the supreme deities are God the Father,
God the Son, and the Bird or Spirit ; subordinate to whom
are an endless tribe of local deities and genii attending to
every individual.'"
222. The Egyptians are said to have signified their divine
Triad by a simple triangle,"" which sometimes appears upon
Greek monuments '" but the most ancient form of this more
;

concise and comprehensive symbol, appears to be that of the

three lines, or three human legs, springing from a central disk
or circle, which has been called a Trinacria, and supposed to

'^'
Plin. xxxiv. 4.
''""
Ol. Rubbeck : Atlant. ii. pp.
*"HoBoi, desire. Phaethon is an 2og, 210.
Homeric title of the Sun, signifying ^'''^
Missionaries' First Voyage,\i.'a2i'
splendid or luminous but afterwards
;
*'* Plutarch : Isis and Osiris, 56.
personified by the mythologists into a " They comparethe perpendicular
son of Apollo. side to the male, the base to the fe-
*" Mallet : Hist, de Danemarc. male, and the hypothenuse to the off-
Introd. vii. p. 115. Thor bore the spring of the two: Osiris as the be-
club of Hercules ; but like Bachus he ginning, Isis as the medium or recep-
was the god of the seasons, and his tacle, and Horus as the accomplish-
chariot was drawn by goats. Ibid, et ing." The equilateral triangle of the
Oda Thrymi Edd. xxi. Ol. Rhdbeck. Pythagoreans is not here signified,
tab. X. fig. 2S. . *53 -ppjig ;g (-he case on the coins of
the colonies of Magna Groecia.
341
170 The Symbolical Language of

allude to the island of Sicily, but which is of Asiatic origin;

itsearliest appearance being upon the very ancient coins of
Aspendus in Pamphylia; sometimes alone in the square in-
cuse; and sometimes upon the body of the eagle or the back
of the lion.'" The tripod, however, was more generally em-
ployed for this purpose and is found composed in an endless
;

variety of ways, according to the various attributes meant to

be specifically expressed. On the coins of Menecratia in
Phrygia it is represented between two asterisks, with a serpent
wreathed round a battle-axe inserted into it, as an accessory
symbol signifying preservation and destruction.'" In the
ceremonial of worship, the number three was employed with
mystic solemnity '" and in the emblematical hands above
;

alluded to, which seem to have been borne upon the point of
a staff or sceptre in the Isiac processions, the thumb and two
fore-fingers are held up to signify the three primary and gen-
eral personifications, while the peculiar attributes of each are
indicated by the various accessory symbols.

THE MYSTIC DOVE AND THE ITALIAN WOODPECKER.

223. A was probably chosen for the emblem of the

bird
third person to signify incubation, by which was figuratively
expressed the fructification of inert matter, caused by the
vital spirit moving upon the waters. When represented under
a human form, and without the emblem, it has generally
wings, as in the figures of Mithras and, in some instances,
;

the Priapic cap or .(Egyptian mitre upon its head, with the
hook or attractor in one hand, and the winnow or separator
in the other.'" The dove would naturally be selected in the
East in preference to every other species of bird, on account
of its domestic familiarity with man it usually lodging under
;

the same roof with him, and being employed as his messenger
from one remote place to another. Birds of this kind were
also remarkable for the care of their offspring, and for a sort
of conjugal attachment and fidelity to each other as likewise ;

for the peculiar fervency of their sexual desires whence ;

they were sacred to Venus, and emblems of love."' On the

'" See Mus. Hunter, tab. vii. No. *'' Aristotle : De Ccelo, i. 1. " In
15. the holy rites of the gods, we use this
A similar old coin with the symbol number."
on the back of a lion is in the cabinet *" See Phoenician coins of Malta.
of Mr. Knight. *5' ^LIAN De Aniinalibus, iii. 44..
:

'" Brass coin in the cabinet of Mr. and iv. 2.

Knight.
342
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 171

same account they were said by the poets to carry ambrosia

from the ocean to Jupiter; "° for, being the symbols of love
or attraction, they were the symbols of that power, which
bore the finer exhalations, the immortal and celestial infusions
called ambrosia, with which water, the prolific element of the
earth, had been impregnated, baclc to their original source,
that they might be again absorbed in the great abyss of the
divine essence. Birds, however, of two distinct kinds appear
in the attitude of incubation on the heads of the Egyptian
Isis and in a beautiful figure in brass belonging to Mr. Payne
;

Knight, a bird appears in the same posture on the head of a

Grecian deity which by the style of work must be much an-
;

terior to the adoption of anything ^Egyptian into the religion

of Greece. It was found in Epirus with other articles, where
the Sunnaos, or female personification of the supreme God,
Jupiter of Dodona, was Dione who appears to have been ;

the Juno-Venus, or composite personage already mentioned.

In this figure she seems to have been represented with the
diadem and sceptre of the former, the dove of the latter, and
the golden disk of Ceres which last three symbols were also
;

those of the Egyptian Isis. The dove, being thus common

to the principal goddess both of Dodona and .^Egypt, may
account for the confused story told by Herodotus, of two pig-
eons, or priestesses called pigeons, going from Thebes in
^gypt, and founding the oracles of Dodona and Libya.™
Like others of the kind, it was contrived to vail the mystic
meaaing of symbolical figures, and evade further questions.
The beak of the bird, however, in the figure in question, is too
much bent for any of the dove kind, and is more like that of
a cuckoo, which was the symbol on the sceptre of Here, the
Argive Juno in ivory and gold by Polycleitiis, which held a
pomegranate in the other hand;"" but what it meant is vain
to conjecture. Another bird, much celebrated by the Greek
poets as a magical charm or philter, under the name of
Yunx,"^ appears by the description of Aristotle °" to be the

'^* Homer: Odyssey, xii. "Timid ARistory,^: IIisto}y of Animals,

^^^

doves which carry ambrosia to father ii. 12.The yunx torquilla or wry-
Zeus." These lines are supposed to neck, a bird of the woodpecker fam-
have been interpolated. . ily, was used in charms and incanta-
See also Athen^us Deipnoso- : tions. was also tied to a magic
It
fhista, vl. 421. wlieel, which was turned round
**" Herodotus : ii. 54, et seq. while charms or incantations were
*" Pausanias: ii. 17. (Elsewhere used. See XenophoN Memorabilia,
:

translated.) iii. II, 17; ViRGiL Eclogues, viii,

:

*'" Pindar : Pythia, iv. 380, and 21.

Nemea, iv. Also Theocrites.
345
172 The Symbolical Language of

larger spotted woodpecker; which, however, we have never

observed in any monuments of ancient art; nor do we know
of any natural properties belonging to it that could have
authorised its use. It seems to be the Pious of the Italians,
which was sacred to Mars.'"

OTHER DELINEATIONS AT HIERAPOLIS.

224. After the supreme Triad, which occupied the adytum

of the temple at Hierapolis, came the personifications of their
various attributes and emanations which are called after the ;

names of the corresponding Grecian deities; and among

which was an ancient statue of Apollo clothed and bearded,
contrary to the usual mode of representing him."" In the
vestibule were two phalli of enormous magnitude °°° upon ;

one of which a person resided during seven days twice in each

year to communicate with the gods,"" and pray for the pros-
perity of Syria and in the court were kept the sacred or sym-
;

bolical animals such as bulls, horses, lions, bears, eagles,

:

etc."' In an adjoining pond were the sacred fish, some of

'" Strabo : V. " The Picentines : a little brasen man, whose symbol is
a colony of Sabines, a woodpecker fly- enormously disproportionate. There
ing before ihe men taking the lead, is also in the temple the figure of a
indicated the way ; from which came female, who is dressed in man's
the name : for the bird was named clothes. The priests are self-mutilated
Picus,and venerated as sacred to Ares men and they wear women's garments.
or Mars." The temple itself stands upon a hill,
'" LuciAN De Dea Syria. "There
: in the middle of a city (Hierapolis, the
is a statue of Apollo, not as was usual holy city, near Aleppo) and it is sur-
;

to make such ; for all others represent rounded by a double wall. The porch
Apollo young and in the attitude of of the temple fronteth the north, and
running, but they have given Apollo, it is two hundred yards in circumfer-
beard."
in this statue, a ence within it are the two phalli be-
;

" In
another particular they have fore mentioned, each about a hundred
made an innovation in their Apollo ;
and fifty yards high."
they have covered Apollo with gar- **' LuciAN [Dryden's Translation].
:

ments." " To the top of one of these phallic

Similar figures of Apollo are upon pillars a man ascends twice during
some of the very early coins of Syra- the year and he remains there seven
;

cuse and Rhegium. days at a time. The vulgar imagine

**' LuciAN De Dea Syria [Dry-
: that he converseth with the gods above
den's translation]. " The two great and prayeth for the prosperity of all
phalli standing in the porch with the Syria, which prayers the gods hear,
inscription on them These Phalli, :
'
near at hand." " He never sleeps
I, Bacchus, dedicated to my step- during the seven days."
mother, Juno.' The Greeks erect *'* LuciAN [Dryden's translation].
:

phalli to Bacchus, which are little " Within the temple's precincts were
men made out of wood, bene nasatos ; kept o.xen, horses, eagles, bears, and
and these are caMod Jietirospasta [mov- lions ; that are in no way noxious to
ing by artificial muscles]. There is men, but may be handled freely."
also on the right hand of the temple
.^46
 SJi„)'''^l)'V'^''-
;-^-^>>j>Hi'*^
-^^^C.'.^
Ariadne in Naxt
 Ancient Art and Mythology. 173

which were tame and of great size and about the temple ;

were an immense number of statutes of heroes, priests, kings,

and other deified persons, who had either been benefactors to
it, or, from their general celebrity, been thought worthy to be

ranked with them. Among the former were many of the

Macedonian princes, and among the latter several of the
heroes and heroines of the Iliad, such as Achilles, Hector,
Helen, Hecuba, Andromache, etc.""

THE DEIFIED PERSONAGES.

225. The most common mode of signifying deification in

a portrait was representing the figure naked, or with the sim-
ple chlamys or mantle given to the statues of the gods. The
head, too, was sometimes radiated, or the bust placed upon
some sacred and appropriate symbol such as the cornu- :

copiae,'" the flower of the lotus,'" or the inverted obelisk;

which last mode was by far the most frequent the greatest ;

part of the busts now extant of eminent Grecian statesmen,

poets, and philosophers, having been thus represented, though
many of them are of persons who were never canonised by
any public decree; for, in the loose and indeterminate system,
of ancient faith, every individual could consecrate in his own
family the object of his admiration, gratitude, or esteem, and
address him with whatever rites of devotion he thought
proper, provided he did nothing contrary to the peace and
order of societ)% or in open violation of the established forms
of worship. This consecration, however, was not properly
deification, but what the Roman Catholic Church still prac-
tices under the title of canonisation the object of it having
;

been considered, according to the modern acceptation of the

'" LuciAN : " They elect a high placed properly in his seat and ;

priest every year, who alone has the Lucian declares that he once saw the
privilege of being clothed in purple god throw the priests down and walk,
and of wearing a golden tiara." by himself in the air.
" There are a crowd of persons at- This temple having been in an allu-
tached to the sanctuary ; musicians vial country near the river Euphrates,
with flutes and fifes, galli or sodomites, it isprobable that many of the stat-
and fanatic or enthusiastic women." ues which adorned it still exist under
" Near the temple is a sacred lake the accumulated soil,
containing great numbers of sacred "" There are many instances of
fish." these in gems.
" Outside the temple is a large brasen ''" The marble bust called " Clytie "
altar and a thousand brasen statues of in the British Museum, is of this char-
gods and heroes, kings and priests." acter ; it was more properly, however^
The statue of Apollo sweat blood, an Isis.
when he wished to speak, and was not
349
 174 The Symbolical Langttage of

words, rather as a saint than a god wherefore a deified or ;

" canonised " Roman Emperor was not called Deus^ but Divus,
a title which the early Christians equally bestowed on the
canonised champions of their faith.

EMASCULATES AND VIRGINS IN THE SACERDOTAL OFFICE.

226. Among
the rites and customs of the Temple at Hier-
apolis, as well as in those of Phrygia, the practice of the
and assuming the manners and
priests castrating themselves,
dress of women, is one of the most unaccountable. The leg-
endary tale of Combabus adduced by the author of the treatise
ascribed to Lucian, certainly does not give a true explanation
of it, but was probably invented, like others of the kind, to
conceal rather than develop for the same custom prevailed
;

in Phrygia among the priests of Cybele and Atys, who had

no such story to account for it. Perhaps it might have arisen
from a notion of making themselves emblems of the Deity,
by acquiring an androgynous appearance or, as Phurnutus ;

conjectures, from some allegorical fiction, as of the castration

of Heaven or Uranus by Time, or Kronos of Kronos by
Jupiter,'" etc. It is possible, likewise, that they might have

'" Phurnutus : De Natura Dear., fered by Osiris, Mithras, Adonis,

vi. p. 147. Esmun (.(Esculapius), and Bacchus ;

The employment of ^a/A' or eunuchs and they are supposed to illustrate in

in the sacerdotal office seems to have allegorical symbolism, the cessation of
gone side by side with the keeping of the active male or fecundating power
singing-women as priestesses. Emas- of the sun at the Autumnal Equinox."
culation enables the better perform- (Supplement to the Voyages of Ana-
ance of vocal music; and it is as- charsis and Antenor) It took place in
serted, that youths deprived of virility Phrygia on the third day of the festi-
are employed in the choirs of St. val of Atys. The priests of Cybele
Peter's at Rome, and perhaps, at appeared in bands or groups, exhibit-
other churches. A reference seems to ing the peculiar raptures of religious
have been made to the practice in the frenzy, and appearing like Bacchanals
Gospel according to Matthew : " And or Pythonesses intoxicated with the
there be eunuchs which have made obsession of the divinity. In one
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom hand they brandished the sacred
of heaven's sake ;he that is able to knife of sacrifice ; in the other were
receive it, let him receive it " (xix. burning torches of pine. Leaving
12). So did Origen, and very possibly the towns, they wandered like dis-
others of note in the Christian Church; traded persons over the fields and
and the Roman Catholic monks, as mountains in quest of the slain one,
well as the Thibetan lamas, are such crying and bewailing. Having swal-
figuratively, or as the Jesuit obliga- lowed the mystic potion, their excite-
tion expresses it, " as a corpse." ment rose to the highest pitch they ;

Among the Asiatics and Egyptians, beat themselves and ran a-muck
captives and slaves were so mutilated. through the fields, lacerating one an-
In the religious rites "these mutilations other with heavy chains; they
were also made in honor or commem- danced, wounded themselves, scourged
oration of the dismemberment suf- themselves and each other, and
 Ancient Art and Mythology 175

thought a deprivation of virility an incentive to that spiritual

enthusiasm, to which women were observed to be more liable
than men and to which all sensual indulgence, particularly
;

that of the sexes, was held to be peculiarly adverse whence ;

strict abstinence from the pleasures of both the bed and the
table was required preparatory to the performance of several
religious rites, though all abstinence was contrary to the gen-
eral festive character of the Greek worship. The Pythian
priestesses in particular fasted very rigidly before they
mounted the tripod, from which their predictions were uttered ;

and both they and the Sibyls were always virgins such alone ;

being qualified for the sacred office of transmitting divine in-

spiration. The ancient German prophetesses, too, who exer-
cised such unlimited control over a people that would submit
to no human authority, were equally virgins consecrated to the
Deity, like the Roman Vestals or chosen from the rest of the
;

species by some manifest signs of his predilection.'" Perpet-

ual virginity was also the attribute of many of the ancient
goddesses, and, what may seem extraordinary, of some who had
proven themselves prolific. Minerva, though pre-eminently
distinguished by the title of the Virgin^''* is said to have had
children by the Sun, called Corybantes who appear to have ;

been a kind of priests of that god, canonised for their knowl-

edge, and therefore, fabled to have been his children by
Divine Wisdom."' Diana, who was equally famed for her

finallyhaving completed their mu- manner by the Israelites. Judah took

tilations in honor of the god about
to appear, they invoked him, offering
the bleeding evidences of their de-
stroyed virility. Many died, of course,
from this violence, and the accom-
-panying exposure and haemorrhage ;
but those who survived wore the
female dress from that time. The
priests of the Syrian Goddess, Isis,
Astarte and Cybele, were of this char-
acter. They not only performed the
offices of the temple, but enabled the
patrons who visited the sacred enclos-
ures to vary pederasty with fornication,
When strangers were lured thither to
his daughter-in-law for a priestess; and
the book of Deuteronomy prescribed
that " there shall be no kadeshah of
the daughters of Israel, nor a kadesh
of the sons of Israel." Yet under
Rehoboam and Queen Maachah, who
seems to have been like Olympias, a
priestess of the Dionysiac or phallic
worship, " there were also kadeshim in
the land, and they did according to
all the abomination of the nations."
It may have been that emasculation
was once an incident of asceticism, for
monks are more ancient than Abra-
ham but at later periods, it was a
;

hear their fatally winning music, both constituent of the vices that prevailed
semi-males and females constituted at very many temples. —
A. W.
the choirs ; and as among the Seirens, *" Tacitus Germany.
:

Lamiae, and at the shrines of the Tau- "• Scholiast upon the Oration of De-
rican goddess, their passions as well niosthenes in Androt. " Parthenon ;

as misfortune, in the earlier periods the temple in the acropolis of the Vir-
thus led them to their death. The gin {Parthenos) Athene."
rites of the Sun-god and Mother- s" Strabo x. page 723.
: " Cory-
^oddess were celebrated in a similar bantes : Certain deities (daemons), the
351
 ;

1 76 The Symbolical Language of

virginal purity, has the title of Mother in an ancient inscrip

tion '" and Here or Juno is said to have renewed her virgin-
;

ity every year, by bathing in a certain fountain in the Pelop-

onnesus, the reason of which was explained in the Argive
Mysteries;'" in which the initiated were probably informed
that this was an ancient figurative mode of signifying the fer-
tilising quality of those waters, which renewed and reinte-
grated annually the productive powers of the earth. This
figurative or mystic renovation of virginity seems to be signi-
"'
fied in the Orphic hymns by the epithet Polu-parthenos;
which, though applied to a male personification, may equally
signify the complete restoration of the procreative organs of
the universe after each periodical effort of nature

THE FISH-SYMBOL.

227. Upon
this principle, the placing figures upon some
kinds of appears to have been an ancient mode of conse-
fish
cration and apotheosis, to vail which under the usual cover-
ing of fable, the tales of Arion, Taras, etc., were probably
invented. Fish were the natural emblems of the productive
power of the waters they being more prolific than any other
;

class of animals, or even vegetables, that we know. The

species consecrated to the Syrian Goddess seems to have
been the Scarus, celebrated for its tameness,"° and lubricity
in which last it held the same rank among fish, as the goat did
among quadrupeds."" Sacred eels were kept in the fountain
of Arethusa; '" but the dolphin was the common symbol of
the Greeks, as the tunny was of the Phcenicians both being ;

gregarious fish, and remarkable for intelligence and sagac-

ity,"^ and therefore probably signifying other attributes com-
bined with the generative. The tunny is also the symbol
upon all the very ancient gold coins struck by the Greelcs, in
which it almost invariably serves as the base or substratum for

children of Athenii and Helius . . . Avgives say that, every year, Hera
they were not only addressed as min- bathing becomes again a virgin. This,
isters of the gods, but as gods them- which they impute to Hera, is a scene
selves." of the Arcana, from the initiation."
*" Gruter : Thesauri, xli. 5. *'* Hymn, li.
" There is no reasonable doubt that *" Xenophon Anabasis.
:

the Diana or Artemis of Asia was '*° ^LIAN De Animal, i. ii.

:

identical with Tanait or Anait, and '" Plutarch Craftiness of Ani-

:

Cybele, the Mother-Goddess of the mats.

East.— A. W. *»'^uan: De Animalibus, i. 18.
'"Pausanias: II. xxxviii. "The Plutarch: Craftiness of Animals.
35^
Nereid on a Hippocampus.

Aphrodite on a Sea Monster.

 Ancient Art and Mythology. 177

some other symbolical figure to rest upon '" water being the
;

general means by which all the other powers of nature act.

THE ALLEGORIES BASED ON THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATIONS.

228. The remarkable concurrence of the allegories, sym-

bols, and of ancient mythology in favor of the mystic
titles
system of Emanations, is alone sufRcient to prove the falsity
of the hypotheses founded upon Euhemerus's narrative; and
the accurate and extensive researches of modern travellers
into the ancient religions and traditions of the East, prove
that the narrative itself was entirely fiction no trace of such ;

an island as Panchsea, or of any of the historical records or

memorials which he pretended to have met with there, being
now to be found. On the contrary, the extreme antiquity and
universal reception of the system of Emanations, over all
those vast countries which lie between the Arctic and Pacific
Oceans, has been fully and clearly demonstrated. According
to the Hindus, with whose modification of it we are best ac-
quainted, the supreme ineffable God, called Brahm, or the
great one, first produced Brahma the creator, who is represented
with four heads corresponding with the four elements and ;

from whom proceeded Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the de-
stroyer; who is also the regenerator: for, according to the
Indian philosophy, nothing is destroyed or annihilated, but
only transmuted so that the destruction of one thing is still
;

the generation of another. Hence Siva, while he rides upon

an eagle, the symbol of the destroying attribute, has the lin-
gam, the more explicit symbol of generation, always conse-
crated in his temples. These three deities were still only one
in essence ;and were anciently worshipped collectively under
the title of Trimurti ; though the followers of the two latter
now constitute two opposite and hostile sects which, never- ;

theless, join on some occasions in the worship of the universal

Triad.'"

*** Six are in the cabinet of Mr. ably the Homeric talents stamped.
Knight, in which it is respectively and may be considered as the first
placed under the Triton of Corcyra, the money.
lion of Cyzicus, the goat of ^gasa, the *** Maurtce Indian Antiquities,
:

ram of Clazomenae, the bull of Samos, vol. iv. ad fin. The bull Nanda is the
and the griffin of Teios. For the vehan of Siva the eagle was the ve-
;

form and size of these coins, see Mus. han of Buddha. A. W. —

Hunt. tab. 66, fig. I. They are prob-
355
 ;

178 The Symbolical Language of

THE TRIUNE IDEA UNIVERSAL.

229.This triform division of the personified attributes or

modes of action of one first cause, seems to have been the first
departure from simple theism, and the foundation of religious
mythology in every part of the earth. To trace its origin to
patriarchal traditions, or seek for it in the philosophy of any
particular people, will only lead to frivolous conjecture, or to
fraud and forgery which have been abundantly employed
;

upon this subject nor has repeated detection and exposure

;

either damped the ardor or abashed the effrontery of those,

who still find them convenient to support their theories and
opinions.'" Its real source is in the human mind itself;
whose feeble and inadequate attempts to form an idea of one
universal first cause would naturally end in generalising and
classing the particular ideas derived from the senses, and thus
forming distinct, though indefinite notions of certain attri-
butes or modes of action of which the generic divisions are
;

universally three such as goodness, wisdom, and power

;

creation, preservation, and destruction potential, instrumen-

;

tal, and efficient, etc., etc. Hence almost every nation of the
world, that has deviated from the rude simplicity of primitive
Theism, has had its Trinity in Unity which, when not limited
;

and ascertained by Divine Revelation, branched out, by the

natural subdivision of collective and indefinite ideas, into the
endless and intricate personifications of particular subordin-
ate attributes, which have afforded such abundant materials
for the elegant fictions both of poetry and art.

THE SIMILARITY OF SYMBOLS NOT CONCLUSIVE PROOF OF A

SINGLE ORIGIN.

230. The
similitude of these allegorial and symbolical
fictions with each other, in every part of the world, is no
proof of their having been derived, any more than the primi-
tive notions which they signify, from any one particular
people for as the organs of sense and the principles of intel-
;

lect are the same in all mankind, they would all naturally
form similar ideas from similar objects and employ similar;

signs to express them, so long as natural and not conventional

signs were used. Wolves, lions, and panthers, are equally

*" See Sibylline verses, oracles, etc. authentic by Mr. Bryant's Ancien,
forged by tlie Alexandrian Jews and Mythology; and Mr. Maurice's Indian
Platonic Christians, but quoted as Antiq. vol. iv.

356
^^ '4i»!i,Uuwu*Ui£'MJU£^^

Gan^ mt^d s
 ;

Ancient Art and Mythology. 179

beasts of prey in all countries; and would naturally be em-

ployed as symbols of destruction, wherever they were known ;
nor would the bull and cow be less obvious emblems of crea-
tive force and nutrition, when it was found that the one might
be employed in tilling the earth, and the other in constantly
supplying the most salubrious and nutritious of food. The
characteristic qualities of the egg, the serpent, the goat, etc.,
are no less obvious; and as observation would naturally be-
come more extensive, or intellect became more active, new
symbols would everywhere be adopted, and new combinations
of them be invented in proportion as they were wanted.

APPARENT IDENTITY OF THE HINDU AND iEGVPTIAN SYMBOLS.

231. The only certain proof of plagiary or borrowing is

where the animal or vegetable productions of one climate are
employed as symbols by the inhabitants of another as the ;

lion is in Thibet and as the lotus and hooded snake were in

;

.iEgypt '" which make it probable that the religious symbols

;

of both those countries came originally from the Hindus. As

commercial communications, however, became more free and
intimate, particular symbols might have been adopted from
one people by another without any common origin or even
connection of general principles; though between .^Egypt and
Hindustan the general similarity is too great, in points remote
from common usage, to have been spontaneous or accidental.
One of the most remarkable is the hereditary division into
castes derived from the metempsychosis, which was a funda-
mental article of faith with both as also with the ancient
;

Gauls, Britons, and many other nations. The Hindu castes

rank according to the number of-transmigrations which the
soul is supposed to have undergone, and its consequent prox-
imity to, or distance from, re-absorption into the divine
from which it sprang and in no
essence, or intellectual abyss, ;

instance in the history of man, has the craft of imposture, or

the insolence of usurpation, placed one class of human beings
so far above another, as the sacred Brahmans, whose souls are
approaching to a re-union with their source, are above the
wretched outcasts, who are without any rank in the hierarchy

*'* The Asp or Basilisk, the sacred

serpent of .lEgypt had no hood. Mod-
em ethnologists consider India as a
former habitat of the Ethiopians or
Hamitic race, with which the Egyp-
359
were affiliated. The Hindu or
tians
Brahman population of India, are of a
different ancestry, and were originally
neither phallic nor serpent worship-
pers. —A.W.
 ;

i8o The Symbolical Langiiage of

and are therefore supposed to have all the long, humiliating,

and painful transmigrations yet before them. Should the
most respectable and opulent of these degraded mortals hap-
pen to touch the poorest, and, in other respects, most worth-
less person of exalted religious rank, the offense, in some of
the Hindu governments, would be punished with death; even
to let his shadow reach him, is to defile and insult him and ;

as the respective distinctions are in both hereditary, the soul

being supposed to descend into one class for punishment, and
ascend into the other for reward, the misery of degradation is
without hope even in posterity the wretched parents having
;

nothing to bequeath to their unfortunate offspring that is not

tainted with everlasting infamy and humiliation. Loss of
caste is therefore the most dreadful punishment that a Hindu
can suffer; as it affects both his body and his soul, extends
beyond the grave, and reduces both him and his posterity for-
ever to a situation below that of a brute.
232. Had this powerful engine of influence been employed
in favor of pure morality and efficient virtue, the Hindus
might have been the most virtuous and happy of the human
race but the ambition of a Hierarchy has, as usual, employed
;

it to serve its own

particular interests, instead of those of the
community whence to taste of the flesh of a cow,
in general :

or be placed with certain ceremonies upon the back of a bull,

though unwillingly and by constraint, are crimes by which the
most virtuous of men is irrevocably subjected to it, while the
worst excesses of cruelty, fraud, perjury, and peculation leave
no stains nor pollutions whatsoever. The future rewards, also,
held out by their religion, are not to any social or practical
virtues, but to severe penances, operose ceremonies, and,
above all, to profuse donations to the priesthood. The
Brahmans have even gone so far as to sell future happiness by
retail and to publish a tariff of the different prices, at which
;

certain periods of residence in their paradise, or regions of

bliss, are to be obtained between the diflFerent transmigrations
of the soul.'" The Hindus are of course a faithless and
fraudulent, though in general a mild and submissive race
for the same system which represses active virtue, represses
aspiring hope and by fixing each individual immovably in
;

his station, renders him almost as much a machine as the im-

plement which he employs. Hence, like the ancient .Egyp-
tians, they have been eminently successful in all works of art
that require only methodical labor and manual dexterity, but
"" Maurice : Indian Antiquities, vol. v.

360
 ;;

Ancient Art and Mythology. i8i

have never produced anything in painting, sculpture, or ar-

chitecture, that discovers the smallest trace or symptom of
those powers of the mind, which we call taste and genius ;

and of which the most early and imperfect works of the Greeks
always show some dawning. Should the pious labors of our
missionaries succeed in diffusing among them a more pure and
more moral, but less uniform and less energetic system of
religion, they may improve and exalt the characters of indi-
vidual men but they will for ever destroy the repose and
;

tranquillity of the mass. The lights of European literature

and philosophy will break in with the lights of the Gospel
the spirit of controversy will accompany the spirit of devo-
tion and it will soon be found that men, who have learned
;

to think themselves equal in the sight of God, will assert

their equality in the estimation of men. It requires therefore
no spirit of prophecy, nor even any extraordinary degree of
political sagacity, to fix the date of the fall of European dom-
ination in the East from the prevalence of European religion.

HINDU POETRY AND MYTHOLOGY.

233. From the specimens that have appeared in European

languages, the poetry of the Hindus seems to be in the same
style as their art; and to consist of gigantic, gloomy, and
operose fictions, destitute of all those graces which distinguish
the religious and poe'tical fables of the Greeks. Nevertheless
the structure of their mythology is full as favorable to both
being equally abundant and more systematic in its emanations
and personifications. After the supreme Triad, they suppose
an immense host of inferior spirits to have been produced
part of whom afterward rebelling under their chiefs Moisa-
soor and Rhaabon, the material world was prepared for their
prison and place of purgation in which they were to pass
;

through eighty-nine transmigrations prior to their restora-

tion. During this time they were exposed to the machinations
of their former leaders, who endeavor to make them violate
the laws of the Omnipotent, and thus relapse into hopeless
perdition, or lose their caste, and have all the tedious and
painful transmigrations already past to go through again to ;

prevent which, their more dutiful brethren, the emanations

that remained faithful to the Omnipotent, were allowed to
comfort, cherish, and assist them in their passage and that
;

all might have equal opportunities of redeeming themselves,

the divine personages of the great Triad had at different
l82 Ancient Art and Mythology.

times become incarnate in different forms, and in different

countries, to the inhabitants of which they had given different
laws and instructions suitable to their respective climates and
circumstances; so that each religion may be good without
being exclusively so the goodness of the Deity naturally
;

allowing many roads to the same end.

ANCIENT RELIGION AND ITS RELATION TO ART.

234. These incarnations, which form the principal subjects

of sculpture in all the temples of India, Thibet, Tartary, and
China, are above all others calculated to call forth the ideal
perfections of the art, by expanding and exalting the imagin-
ation of the artist, and exciting his ambition to surpass the
simple imitation of ordinary forms, in order to produce a
model of excellence worthy to be the corporeal habitation of
the Deity; but this, no nation of the East, nor indeed of the
Earth, except the Greeks and those who copied them, ever
attempted. Let the precious wrecks and fragments, therefore,
of the art and genius of that wonderful people be collected
with care and preserved with reverence, as examples of what
man is capable of under peculiar circumstances which, as ;

they have never occurred but once, may never occur again !

Leda, Swan and Eros.

 ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
COMPRISING THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES, HEROES, PERSONS,
SYMBOLS, AND OTHER MATTERS MENTIONED
IN THIS WORK.

[the numerals refer to the pages.]

A.

Aah-Mosis and Thoth-Mosis expelled the Hyk-Sos, or Shepherds, from

Egypt, 43-
Ahel, Bel, or Apollo the Sun-god of the Assyrians and Phoenicians, and
probably the same as Horns, or Krishna, 63.
Ablution —See Baptism and Parification.
Ablution, or Baptism, generally practiced among all nations of antiquity, I2I ;

always preceded initiation into the Egyptian and Eleusinian Mysteries,

121 Jewish proselytes immersed after being circumcised, I2i.
;

Abraham, the patriarch, children {benim) from stones (abenini), 25 ; his prayer
supposed to heal the household of Abimelech, 46 ; not surprised or startled
when ordered to sacrifice his only son, 123.
Abstinence of the Orphean worshippers of Bacchus, 49 ; from pleasures of bed
and table enjoined, 174, 175.
Acacia, a mystical symbol, no.
Acanthus, a symbol, 109.
Achamoth, Sophia, or personified imperfect Wisdom of the Ophites, l6.
Achilles overcame the Amazons, 34 ; shield of, 97 ; represented with the
features of a woman, as though double-sexed, 159.
Actmon, metamorphoses of, probably invented from some symbolical composi-
tion, 81.
Active, or Male, Principle of the Universe, represented by Bacchus, or Dionysus,
10, 18, 19, 21, 22, 67, 79 ; by the goat, 21, 78, 142 by the phallus, or lingam,
;

12, 15, 142 ;by the bull, 18, 35. 66, 98, 142 ; worshipped by the Arabs as
Urotalt, 19 ;comprehended by the Egyptians as Osiris, 21, 58 symbolised ;

by fire, 25, 26, 27, 6i also by Jupiter, 28, 81, 82 by the fig, 29 signified
; ; ;

by Neptune, 31, 67 denoted by Ihe thighs, which were burned in

;
 ;

1
84 Index.

sacrifices, 32by evergreens, 32 Celestial Love, 38 by Baal-Peor, 49, 132

; ; ; ;

by the phallic manikin, used in the worship of Osiris, 23, the "grove,"
49, and Syrian goddess, 172; by
Bel & Baal, 54; by Amun, 57; by
Priapus, 10, 57, 132; by the pyramid, church-spire and pinnacle, 70; by

the cock, 70 by the horse, 77;

by satyrs, 78 by Fauns and Paniski, 78
; ; ;

by the ChimEera, 91 ; exercised by night, 94 represented by the Soter ;

Kosmou. 98 ; by the pine cone, 113 by Mars, 126 by Pan, 142 im- ; ; ;

pregnated females of the human species without the co-operation of a

male, 158.
Adam, his creation and fall, according to the Ophite theory, 16 ;
Lilith, first

wife name of man, as both male and female, 159.

of, 57 ;

Adjuration by Agamemnon, also by the Athenian women at the Thesmophoria,

165.
Adonis, or Adoni (the Lord), a title of Melkarth the Phoenician Hercules, 2
a divinity of the Orphic or mystic faith, corresponding with Bacchus and
Osiris, 9, 85 ; same as Priapus, 10 ; an emanation, one of the seven spirits
of the planets, 16 ; history disguised by poetical and allegorical fable, 67 ;

beloved by Venus-Astart6, 67 ; name of the sun, 85 ; killed by the boar,

the emblem of winter, 85, 156 ; mysteries celebrated at Byblos, 84 ;

passes
six months with Proserpina, and six months with Venus, 80 killed by ;

Ares or Mars in the form of a boar, like Atys, 86; his festivals concilia-
tory, 87 his death and revival celebrated at Athens, 88
;
probably the ;

same as lao, the god of the Jews, 132.

Adrastus, built a circular temple, 61.
Adumbla, the white cow of Scandinavian mythology, 36 ; suckled the sun each
winter, 36.
^^!>, or goat-skin, the breast-plate of Minerva, 130; represented the female
principle of Nature, 130; employed by Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo, 131;
made by Vulcan for Jupiter, 131.
ALgobolium or , sacrifice of a goat in the Mithraic rites, 123 ; catechumen bathed
in the blood, 123.
yEgypt, secret or mystic system preserved by a hereditary priesthood, 3 tales ;

concerning Osiris and Typhon, 6 ; phallic symbolism, 12 story of Cleopatra, ;

15 ; " Burning of Lamps,'' 26 ; the sacred cow at Mo-memphis and the

Bulls Apis and Mnevis, 35 ancient learning obliterated by the Persian
;

and Macedonian governments, 44 alliance with Phoenicians, 49 Persians ; ;

destroyed temples, 5i the Hyk-Sos denominated Phcenicians, Greeks,

;

Arabians and Strangers, 74 Centaur among sculptures, 77 ; priests wore

;

no garments of animal substance, 89 Serapis never known till the time of ;

the Ptolemies, 104 ; the Lotus not now found, 104 ;

great antiquity, 106 ;

won from the Nile, 108 ;

priestly institutions lasted between eleven and
twelve thousand years, 108.
/Egyptians, hieroglyphical writing, 6 judgment of Amenti, 8 originated the ; ;

mysteries of Bacchus and phallic procession, 10 employed the hooded ;

snake in the mysteries, and probably borrowed it from India, lO, 109 ;

placed an egg on the monuments, 20 abstain from cow's fiesh, 36; worship ;

of Isis, the female principle of generation, 36 ; many symbols appear to be

Indian, 37 ; worshipped Osiris as hidden in the embrace of the sun, 37 ;

believed the sun to be the body from which emanated the all-pervading
 ;

Index. 185

spirit, 37 ; their language sacred, being a language of the gods, 38; their

magistrates would put a man to death for killing a cat or monkey, 41 ;

honored various animals and plants as divine symbols, 42 would never ;

reveal anything concerning their symbols, 42 the priests probably ;

pretended to more knowledge of them than they really had, 42 ; their

priests were sacrificers, 42 esteem for hieroglyphics, 42 the relation of
; ;

the conquests and empire of Sesostris, a probable fiction, 42; Hebrews never
subject to their kings, 43naval battles six thousand years ago between
;

them and nations beyond the Mediterranean, 43 memorials of conquests ;

in Asia, the " hornet," " scourge " or plague, 43

43 ; the new system of ;

interpretation adopted in the second century wholly inconsistent with the

ancient system, 43 temples filled with lamentations, 50 wine held in
; ;

abomination never gave way to ecstatic raptures of devotion, 50 celebra-

; ;

ted "the Mourning for the Only-Begotten," 50 ;' sexual rites not practiced
in the temples, 65 ; worshipped Night as Athor, 56 ; worshipped Leto
or Latona, 57 ; understood the heliocentric system, 5o ; labyrinths,
places for human sacrifices, 65 ; believed in two opposite powers
in the world, one generating and the other destroying, 71 ; fire

held to be the efficient principle, 71 ; sufferings of Osiris, the mystery of

their religion, 71 ; believed that a woman might conceive by the approach
of a divine spirit, 72 ; believed Osiris to represent good, and Typhon evil,

72 ; believed that the earth at an ancient period was inhabited by Saurian

monsters or lizards, 72; personified universal Nature as Isis, 83; celebrated
the Death and Revival oi the deity, 88 worshipped Prometheus, 88 held ; ;

heat and moisture to be sexual symbols, 98 ; styled the Moon the Mother
of the Universe, 99 ; represented the moon under the symbol of a cat, 100
veneration for the lotus, 105 ; obtained their symbols, the lotus and hooded
snake from India, 109, 179 ; had images resembling Juggernaut, Ganesa and
Vishnu, 109 ; their architecture original, 109 ; originated the Corinthian
order, 110 embalmed their dead to preserve them till the general confla-
;

gration, 117; used the pyramids for astronomical observations and religious-
rites, 117 ; excavated temples in the rock, 117 ; practiced ablution before
initiation, 121 ; worship more systematic than that of the Greeks, 127 ;
considered Phtha as father of the Cabeirian gods, 127; worshipped Wisdom.
or Athene as Neith, 127 ; represented the all-pervading spirit by the
Scarabffius or black beetle, 128 ; chief-priests wore bells, 133 ;
placed sym-
bols of the sun and moon in boats, 133 ; represented Amun by the Ram,
136 ; considered Amun the same as Zeus or Jupiter and Pan, 137; used the
designation Amun as a title of courtesy and respect, 137 employed ;
the

goat as a sexual symbol, 141 never worshipped heroes, 154. ;

JSschylus, the Tragedian, narrow escape from death, for divulging a mystical
legend, 5 called the Moon the Daughter of the Sun, 99
;
describes his ;

characters as swearing on the point of a spear or sword, 115.

/Esculapius, the cock offered to him in the mysteries, 4 the same deity as ;

Hermes, Thoth, and Cadmus, 10 the serpent his symbol, 14 repre- ; ;

sented by the Epidaurian serpent, 15 Apollo reputed to be his father, 100 ;

slain by weapons forged by the Cyclopes, 74; the Emeph of lamblichus, 150.
^ther. Dragon of the, 16 a name of Jupiter, 23 fire of, ruled by Zeus, 131 1
; ;

closely related to sulphur, 135.

 ;

1 86 Index.

^Ethiopia, the country south of ^gypt, 36, 106.

Ethiopian, race occupied India, Affghanistan, Susiana, Arabia, ^Egypt, and
other countries, 65 ; constructed Labyrinths, and sacrificed human victims,

65 ; a designation of Prometheus, 88.

Afides, Aides, or Hades, the ancient name of Pluto, 104 ; to be destroyed,

117 ; one of the Cabeirian deities, 150.

Africa, a serpent worshipped in luidaor Whyda, 15 ; cow revered on the

Gold Coast, 36 ; Poseidon or Neptune, the chief god, 64 ; human sacrifices

common long after the Christian era, 153.

AgathodcEmon, or Radiated Serpent, 16 ; said to have been worshipped by the
Albigenses, Cathari, and Paulicians, 17 ; similarity of the name Num or
Kneph to that of Numa, king of Rome, hardly an accident, 63.
Agenor, or Belus, tutelar god of Sidon, father of Europa, 65.
Ages, Middle, barbarism and bigotry induced the destruction of ancient
art, 7.

Ahaz, king of Judah, said to have " burned his children in the fire," 122.

Ahriman, or Anra-Mainyas, the Potentate of Evil, 62, 72 probably the same ;

as Harmannu, the god of Susiana, or Kissia, 62 called also Seth, Satan, ;

and Beel-Zebub, go to be destroyed at the end of 6,000 years, 117.

;

Aidoia, the sexual parts (see Phallus) of Typhon, 58 female, engraved upon ; ;

pillars by Sesostris, 93,94 on Hermaic statues, 114.

;

Albigenses, Cathari, and Paulicians, reputed worshippers of the Agathodaemon

Serpent, 17.
Alcibiades, condemned for divulging a mystic secret, 5 ;
priestess of Athens
refused to curse, 59.
Alexander, (the Great,) expedition into India, 18, 136 ; his mother a priestess
of the Bacchic rites, 50 ; her boast that he was the son of Dionysus the
Serpent-God, 80; his body conveyed from Babylon to Alexandria, 81;
hearse adorned with goat-elephants, 81 ; shrine of gold melted, 81 ; letter

from him to his mother declaring the gods to be only deified mortals a
forgery, 164.
Alexandria, Eclectic Jews taught the Apocrypha, or doctrine of Wisdom, 4
body of Alexander deposited there, 81 ; new modification of ancient
systems of religion and philosophy, 84 ; temple of Serapis, 104.
Alitta, or Elissa, a name of Mylitta, 61.
Allegories, of the Egyptians, attempt of lamblichus to adapt to a new system, 43.
Allegory, the Mystical doctrines expressed by 5, 150; general resemblance in
different countries, 5; not found in the Iliad, or Odyssey, 11; of the
Minotaur, 64 composed of legends and fables, 66, 67 of the Centaurs,
; ;

76, 77 expressed universal harmony produced by the changes of nature,

;

8l ; the fable of Ceres and Proserpin^ of this nature, 82 ; of the bird Fanina,
the Phoenix of the north, 86 ; the dismemberment of Bacchus like the
death of Atys, Adonis, and Osiris, 88 ; the story of Prometheus, 88 ; the
punishments suffered in Hell, 124 mixture by Virgil, 125
; physical, in ;

popular creed of the Hindus, 155 ; story of Bacchus and Dionysus-Zagreus,

156; confusion of legends, 158 Homeric poems and books of the ; New
and Old Testament, turned into, 161 ;
Jerusalem Delivered, 161, passim.
All-Prophetic, a title of Jupiter, 47.
Alma, nD?V, Kadesha, or sacred woman, the priestess at Delphi, 47
 Index. 187

oracle of Dodona in Greece, founded ; also of Amun, in Libya, 48 ; devoted

to prostitution in eastern temples, 54, 56.
Alphabetic writing, 6.

Amalthea, the goat that suckled Jupiter, horn of, 84.

Amazons, or votaries of the Double-Sexed deity, 32 passages in the Iliad ;

mentioning them, probably interpolations, 33 five statues in the temple of ;

Diana, at Ephesus, 33 ; reputed worshippers of Diana, 33 ; symbolical

figure of Elephanta, 33 ; the classical figures not one-breasted, 34 re- ;

sembled the Thugs of India in offering human victims, 34 reputed to have ;

inhabited Northern Africa and invaded Asia, 34 their country called ;

Assyria, 34 Eumolpus their leader, 34 statue at Athens identical with

; ;

that of Diana, 34 ; priestesses of Diana, 34 instituted the ; Circular

Dance of the Mysteries, 34 ; Diana an Amazonian goddess, 67 ; court of,

temple of Mars near by, 69 conflict with Theseus, 158. ;

Ambassador oi Louis XIV. asking the King of the Siamese to embrace Christian-
ity, rebuked by him, 39 ; of India, to Augustus, 90.
Amberics, logging rocks, or Baitulia, like the Stonehenge, 147.
Ambrosial ilonts, conical stones depicted on Tyrian medals, 145.
Amenti, judgment of, 8.

America, North, phallic symbols, 12; jugglers and diviners make chaplets and
girdles of serpents, 14 Mexican captives sacrified, 15 savages believed
; ;

the world supported by a tortoise, 35 ; the pyramid among the symbols of

the savages, 70.
Ampelus, derived from Amphi, or oracle, 47 ; beloved of Bacchus, 91 ;
the vine
personified, 91.
Amphi, or Om-phe, the designation of an oracle, 46 Amphi-anax, king of the ;

oracle, 47 Ampelus, from om-phi, 47 Fompceus, messenger of the oracle

; ;

47 nymph has the same etymology, 47.

;

Amulets, rings and fibulae so employed, 65 ; in France, with the classic figures
of Zeus and Minerva, and a quotation from Genesis, iii. 8, 129, 130; in
England and Ireland, 130.
Amun, same as Zeus, the All-Pervading spirit, 48, 137 oracle in Libya ;

established by a sacred woman, or " black dove," from Thebes, 48 same ;

as Bacchus, 57 ; hereditary priests kept genealogical records, 108 ;

priestly

order lasted between 11,000 and 12,000 years, from Menes to the
Persian invasion, 108 ; the deity most commonly represented under the
symbol of the Ram ; 137 ; same as Zeus and the Pan of Arcadia, 137 ;

the luminous sethereal spirit, 137 ; records said to have been compiled by
Sanchoniathon, 163.
Ana, or Ana-melech, of Sippara, called also Cannes, probably the same as
Poseidon, or Neptune, 65.
Ana%tis,t\i& Mother-Goddess of Armenia. See Venus, Diana, Isis, Ceres, CybeU,
Astarti and Aphrodite.
Anak, or anax, a prince, 96; the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, denominated
Anakes, 96 designation applied to the Anakim, or the sons of Anak, in
;

Palestine, to Agamemnon and Bacchus, 151.

Anchors, an ornament on the Ionic capital, no.
Ancient religions founded on the same principle, 39 generally liberal and ;

humane, 39 ; the rites of every country performed according to the law,

pleasing to the deity, 40 ; modified anew at Alexandria, 84.
1 88 Index.

Androgynous, or Double-Sexed Principle, represented by the bearded Venus of

Paphos, 29, 104, 149, 159 ; by the tortoise, 29, 34 ; by the goddess Freya,
32 ; the Amazons, 33 the buccinum, 34 by Atys, Adonis, and Bacchus,
; ;

67, 95, 9S ; Diana, 99 statue of Apollo, 81

; the Scarabaeus, or black ;

beetle, 128 ; figure of Bacchus, 136.

dngels, adopted by the Jews from the Chaldeans, 54.
Animals, receiving divine honors, 41 ; regarded as emanations from the Supreme
Being, 42 ; worshipped in Kgypt, 42 instinctive motions observed in ;

augury, 44 ; kept in the sacred court at Hierapolis, 172.

Anquetil confounded the Persians of the First with those of the Second
Dynasty, 62.
Antenna, or sail-yard of a ship, 84.
Antiquity ofEgypl, 106; the sacerdotal caste of, between 11,000 and 12,000
years' duration, 208.
Anubis, Hermes, or Mercury, symbolised by a dog, 113 his power like that of ;

Hekate, 113 his face gilded, and at other times black, 116 the Minister
; ;

ofFate, 127.
Apap or Aph-ophis, the Great Serpent, 72 ; same as Python, 72.
Aphetor, Aq>rjTa>p, a name of Apollo, 92.
Aphrodisiacs t 29, 45.
Aphrodite, the Greek name of Venus, also Kypris, daughter of Jupiter and
Dione, 28 ; name perhaps derived from paredesa, a garden, or beautiful
woman, 28 ; called also Hera, or lady, a name of Juno, 29 the dove, her ;

symbol, 29 standing on a tortoise, 34 ; her bust at Corinth, 45 same as

; ;

Mylitta, and her worship at Corinth, and Cyprus, accompanied by prostitu-

tion, 54 ; the most ancient of the Fates, 63 ; six months of each year spent
with Adonis, 85 represented at Paphos as bearded and double-sexed, 104 ;
;

called " The Chariot" as carrying the gods, 134. See Celestial Venus.
Apis, or Epaphus, the Sacred Bull of Egypt, iS ; Mnevis his mystic father, 19 ;

conceived by a ray of light, 19 representation of Osiris, 19, 52

; ; worshipped
by the women tendering their persons to him, 142.
Apocalypse, or unvailing, a designation of the early Christian teaching, 4.
Apocrypha, hidden or occult things, a designation of the esoteric doctrines of
the Alexandrian Jews, 4.
Apollo, battle with the Python, 5 ; statue crowned with olive, 17 ; the raven
his symbol, 29 ; Chryses his priest, 31 ;standing on a tortoise, 34 Olen, ;

his priest and prophet, founded the oracle at Delphi, 46; inspiring exhala-
tion from the Earth imputed to him, 47 ; the serpent Python his represen-
tative, 47 Horus in Egypt, 57, 72 meaning of the name, 58 same as
; ; ;

Abel, or Bel, the younger, 58 on coins, 63 ; worshipped in the

; his figure
circular temple of Stonehenge by the Hyperboreans, 68 Carinas, 70 re- ; ;

presented by obelisks and simple columns, 70 protector of highways, 70; ;

the hawk and lion his symbols, 74 the colossal statue androgynous, ;

81, 99 Didumoeus or Didymteus, temple of, 82

; the Destroyer as ;

well as Deliverer, 91 ; called Sauroktonos, or lizard-killer, Pythios or

putrefier, Smintheus, or mouse-killer, Chnisaor, etc., 91, 92 ; identity with
Hercules, 92, 93; the Day-Sun, 94 ; his worship as Didymseus mixed with
that of Bacchus, 95 ; his lyre, 95; cause of sudden death, 100; father of
/Esculapius, 100; carried the ^gis, 131; accompanying his lyre with the
 ;

Index. 1
89

dance, 139 ; the oldest oracle and sanctuary in Didymi, 144 ; bust, 145 ;

statue sitting upon eggs, with a serpent coiled around them, 147 ; statue
sitting on a conical stone, 148 ; the Mystic Dance, 152 ; — called the Far-
Shooter, 152; — entrusted with the care of the child Dionysus-Zagreus, 156 ;

invoked by Agamemnon, 165.

Apples, an honorary reward at the Olympic, Isthmian and Pythian games,
153.
AfuUius, imposed upon by new system of the Egyptian priesthood, 43 ; invo-
cation.of Isis, 83 meaning of his " seeing of the sun at midnight," 96 de-
; ;

scription of the Sacred Boat-procession, 134.

Ar, the Boar that slew Adonis, the symbol of Ares or Mars, 83, 86.
Arabs, worshipped Urotalt, or Dionysus, under the form of a Bull, 19; acknowledg-
ed only the male and female powers of creation, 19 the Hyk-Sos, or Shep- ;

herds of Egypt, 43, 74 ; revered the square stone as the emblem of the
celestial Venus, or female productive power, 63 ; Cyclopean buildings, 74 ;

many temples were caverns cut in the rock, 117 ; worshipped Peor or Pria-
pus, the god of generation, 132.
Arba-Il, or fourfold god, 35.
Architis Venus, the ancient Venus, statue by Daedalus, also on Mount Libanus,
149.
Ares, see Mars.
Argive women mourned the death of Adonis, 85 ;
— prophetess perceived the
future by tasting the blood of a lamb, 120.
Argonauiic expedition, a fable probably derived from the Egyptian device of

the ram-symbol of Amun, in a boat, l58.

Ariadne, the fabled wife of Bacchus, 66 probably the same as Persephone, or
;

Proserpina, 66 ; said to have been the daughter of Minos and killed by

Diana, 66 ; holding a pine cone, 113 ; Theseus, her fabled lover, 158.
Arion, the steed, offspring of Neptune or Poseidon, and Demeter, 80, 176.
Arisiarchus, charged with impiety for endeavoring to prove the truth of the
heliocentric system, 58.
Atistophanes, charged Diagoras and Socrates with impiety in attributing the

order and unity of the universe to circular motion, 60.

Ark, of Noah and the Centaurs, 77 ; Sacred Boat of Osiris, 134 ;
probably the
first suggestion of the fable of the Argonauts, 168.
Armenia, sexual rites of Venus-Anaitis, 54, 67 probably conquered by Zohak,
;

the Arabian Serpent-King, 62.

Arrow, of Apollo, called also belos and obelos ; signify the emission of the
rays of the sun, 92.
Arsinoi, queen of Ptolemy Philadelphus, called also Hippia, 80.
Artabazes, satrap of Pontus, introduced the Mithraic rites, 53.
Artemis. See Diana, Brimo, Hekatl.
Aryan family, two great branches, the Zend, or Persian, and the Brahman, or
Hindu, 62 Kuru, a popular title before the separation, 154.
;

Asa, King of Judah, deposes his mother for making a neuropast, or phallic
manikin, like those of Egypt and at the temple of the Syrian goddess and
the Venus-Erycina, 49.
Asia, secret or mystic system preserved by the hereditary priesthood, 3;
inhabitants worshipped the cross or tau as the emblem of Venus, 30
 ;

1 90 Index.

overrun by the Amazons, 34; conijuests by the Egyptians, 43; great

regard for oracles, 50 " Mourning for the only-Begotten," 50 massive
; ,

architecture, 74 ; the lion on sepulchral monuments, 74 ; symbolical

figures worshipped, 144 ; fire and serpent worship generally diffused, 151

human sacrifices common, 153; the mystic rites, 157.

Asf, or ur3eus, placed with the winged globe over the porticoes of Egyptian
temples, 15 ; apotheosis of Cleopatra, 15.
Aspasia, a mystic title upon the statues of Venus- Architis, 149.
Ass, the symbol of Typhon, 87.
Assyria, name of the country of the Amazons, 34 ; dialect of Assyria ancient and
cognate with the " language of the gods," 38 ; worship of Bel and Mylitta,
54, 67 ; Cyclopean structures, 74 ; golden calf of Beth-el placed in the
museum, 148.
Astartl, or Aphrodite, the Celestial or Heavenly Venus, a goddess of the mystic
rites, 9 ; same as Terra 24 same as Diana, of the Ephesians, and
and Isis, ;

Anaitis, 34; the "grove," or ashera her symbol, 49; her worship at
Eryx, Armenia, and Palestine, accompanied by prostitution, 55 kadesh- ;

uth in her temples, 56 ; Persians learned her worship, 6l ; the same

as Pasiphae, wife of Minos, 65, 66 ; called Paphia, mother of the Centaurs,
77 ; the deity of the moon, the same as Europa, 103 ; weapons of King

Saul placed in her temple, 114 ; See Celestial Venus.

Astaphceus, a spirit of the planets, 16.
Asterisk, same as the radiated head of Apollo, 64 ;
meant the male principle,

66 ; of the sun on Carthaginian coins, with a horse, 76 ; a wolf the centre,

8g the caps of Dioscuri, 116.
;

Astral divinities, originally the sole gods, I ; days of the week named after

145-
Astrology, judicial, 51 ;
grew out of the doctrine that the active principle of the
universe acted by permanent laws, 51 ; Dryden, the poet, sometimes prac-

ticed it, 52 ; Dr. Noah Stone, of Connecticut, 52 ;

— originated with the
Chaldeans, 53 ; —
not much regarded by the Egyptians, 53.
Atergatis, the Syrian goddess, same as Astarte, Isis, CybelS, and the Heavenly
Venus, 64 round-tower pillars at her temple, 74. See Hierapolis.
;

Atheism, probably not a denial of existence of the gods, but violation of the
Mysteries, 40 ;
punished with death at Athens, 40 ; the offense of Diagoras
and Socrates, 40 ; theoretically the source of judicial astrology, 51 >
'1*^

heliocentric system the probable matter divulged, 60.

Athena, or Athene, see Pallas, Minerva, and Neith.
Athenians, made the Eleusinian Mysteries more celebrated than any other wor-
ship, 3 ;
punished with death those who divulged any thing taught there,
5 ; subjected colonies, 8 ; venerated the olive, 17 ; required the priestess
to curse Alcibiades for profanation, 39 punished atheism with death, 40
; ;

— form of Hermes, 149 — women ; celebrating the Thesmophoria, 165.

Athens, impiety punished with death, 5, 40 ; subjected Asiatic colonies, 8 ;

Amazons led thither by Eumolpns who instituted the Eleusinia, 34; statue
of the Amazon, or Diana, 34 priestess refused to curse Alcibiades, 39
; ;

atheism, not merely a denial of the existence of the gods, but a revealing
or calumniating of the Mysteries, punished with death, 40; Ariadne
brought thither by Theseus, 66 ; festivals of Bacchus kept, 83.
 1

Index. 1 9

dtmoo, the hidden one, the Tammuz of Ezekiel, 72. See Bacchus and Osiris.
Attila, the Getic, worshipped the sword at the Acropolis of Athens, 115.
Attraction, the first principle of animation, called also Eros, Love, and Priapus,
13, 21, 22, 38, 91 ; represented by the loadstone, 59 ; the sun, according to
Pythagoras, the attractive force, 59 ; supposed to be a wreck or fragment —
of more universal science that once existed, 60.
Attributes, eternal, personified, the source of the theogonies, 25.
Atys, an Asiatic divinity, identical with Bacchus, Adonis, and Osiris, 49 ; the
Phrygian Bacchus, 84 called also the Minotaur, 84 killed by a boar, 86,
; ;

155 double-sexed, 67, 95, 98; conceived by the goddess Nana, or Anaitis,
;

eating a pomegranate, 112,

Augury and Vaticination, 44 ; first by animals and birds, 44 ;
gave place to
oracular temples, 45 ; the Bacchic impulse, or prophetic mania, 45 ; college
of Augurs at Rome, 51.
Aurora, or morning, borne by the horse Pegasus, 76.
Avatars, Hindu deities, manifested as heris or heroes, 159.
Authority of the Mysteries rejected by the Euhemerists, 162.
Avesta, Zend, its authenticity as the work of Zoroaster denied, 62 nothing ;

more than the ritual of the modern Ghebers or Parsees, 62 probably genu- ;

ine, 62.
Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, and Casmilus, the Cabeirian gods, 150 ; same as
Pluto, Demeter, ProserpinI, and Hermes.

B.

Baal, of Tyre, Melkarth, the Tyrian Hercules, 2 ; his figure on coins precisely
like that of the high places of, 46 Peor, the Moabite
Grecian Jupiter, 20 ; ;

divinity, 49 worship like that of Isis, 85 ; Baal-Zebub, the Phoenician

;

oracle-god, ranked by the Jews as Prince of the Devils, 89 sacred bonfires ;

in Ireland, 122 children burned or passing through the fire, 122

;
probably ;

the same as Baldur, or Habaldur, the Scandinavian deity, 122 ; worship in

Palestine always attended by prostitution, 132 ; statues like those of
Priapus or Bacchus, 132 ; Baal-Tamar, or lord of the palm, 151.
Baal-bek, or Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, logging stones, 148.
Babylon, divine creative attribute, personified as male and female, called
Bel and Mylitta, 54 ; women prostituted in the temple of Mylitta,
54.
Bacchic Orgies, or Orgies of Dionysus, doctrine taught relative to the soul, 4,
119 ; introduced by Melampus, 10 ; learned from the Phoenicians of Bceotia,
10; introduced by Orpheus, II ; figs and the phallus borne in procession,

30 ;
proceedings against them at Rome, 40 ; the ecstasies of the votaries,

45 ; drinking to intoxication allowed, 45 ; extravagance of the Grecian

women, 49 ; superseded by the Mithraic 53 celebrated in the rites, ;

Orkneys, or Hebrides, as well as by the Thracians and Hindus, 68 observed ;

in Thrace, where the Cyclopes inhabited, 74 the Phrygians commemorate ;

the god asleep in winter and awake in summer, 85 ;

— triennial celebration

at Delphi, 95 ; women whipped at the triennial festival at Alea, 102

— supposed to have been celebrated by the Jews, 132 ; bells worn, 133.
 ;

192 Index.

Bacchus, or Dionysus, flight of, a mystic allegory, 6; a god of the Mysteries, 9;

always associated with serpent worship, 9 ; called Priapus, at Lamp-
sacus, 10; his worship and the phallic procession introduced by
Melampus, 10 ; designation of the Great Serpent showed by Taxilus to
Alexander, 15 ; called Bougenes, 18 ; said by Herodotus to be the Arabian
deity Urotalt, 19 ; represented the whole generative power, 20 ; the goat
also his symbol, 20 ; called also " the first-begotten love," and " Father of
gods and of men," 21, 22, 36 ; in mythology, Kronos.or Zeus, the Unknown
Father, was reverenced as the Father and he as the Son, 22; statue at Eleusis,
26 ; the fig and phallus borne in his processions, 30 ; carried in the thigh
of Jupiter, 32; the foliage of trees and all evergreens sacred to him, 32; the
thighs of victims burned in sacrifice, 32 ; why said to be borne at Thebes,
35 ecstasy at his orgies, 45 ; the vine a favorite symbol, 45 ; the god the
;

source of prophetic inspiration, 45 ; an Asiatic divinity, and identical with

Atys, Adonis, Osiris, and probably Siva, or Maha Deva, and also with Baal-
Peor, 49 ; husband of Ariadne, 66 sometimes depicted double-sexed, 67 , ;

represented the general emanation of the productive power, 67; worshipped

in the British Islands, 68; Sabazius, temple, on Mount Zilmissus, in Thrace,

69 invocation in the Baccha, 75

; the bull, many-headed serpent, and lion,
;

his symbols, 75 ; Satyrs, or Centaurs, accompanying his Indian expedition,

78 ; the goddess Hippa the nurse of the generator, 79 ; a mound in Athens,.
80 : the deer a symbol, 81 ; Kore, or ProserpinS, his reputed mother in the
Orphic Mysteries, 83, 156 rites celebrated at Eleusis with those of Ceres,
;

85 Ganymedes another form of, 87 dismemberment by the Titans, 88 ;

; ;

grapes sacred to him, 89 accompanied by leopards devouring grapes, go ;

;

Ampelus, 91; identity with Hercules, 92; the nocturnal sun, 94;
lao or laon, a mystic title, 95 called also Hyes, 95 ; same as Castor, 96
; ;

terminated his expedition in the remotest East, 96 tomb at Delos, 96 ; ;

god of the waters, 98 the Devourer, 102 mystic epithet of Perikionios,

; ;

III; the pomegranate on his diadem, 112; thyrsus surmounted by pine

cone, I r3 ; mystic fan, or winnow, 120 ; called Liknites, 120 ; ivy, or kissos,
dedicated to him as a Kissean or Cushite deity, 124; called also Bromius,
132; supposed by Plutarch to have been worshipped by the Jews, 132 ; Amun
his father, 137 ; Nyssian dance sacred to him, 139 ; terrestrial genealogy a
fable, 140 ; Dendrites, 144 ; story of Zagreus, 156 ; the " new Bacchus,"
son of Zeus and Proserpina, 156; called Ph-anax, 151.
Baitulia, amberics, ambrosial stones, logging stones, pendre stones, 147, 148.
Baldness of Silenus explained as caused by salacity, 79.
Baldur, a Scandinavian deity, probably the Sun, or Baal, 122.
Bambyki, See Hierapolis and Venus.
Baptism of the man Jesus, and his union with Christ, as taught by sectaries, 17 ;

or ablution in fire and water generally practiced, ] 21 how performed, 121 ;

preceded initiation, 121 ; Jewish proselyte immersed before being circum-

cised, 121 ; considered as being regenerated and animated with a new soul,

122; by fire, at the bonfires of Baal, 122; practiced by the Hindus, Romans,
Irish, Scandinavians, Italians and Jews, 122 ;
purification by blood of a
bull, goat or ram in the Mithraic rites, 123.
Barbarians, and earliest Greeks, worshipped only the sun, moon, earth, star*
and sky, i ; — mysteries and sacred rites, 71.
 Index. 1 93

Barbarism of the middle ages, 7.

Bards, Miisseus and Eumolpus said to be from Thrace, 11 ; Olen, a priest of
Apollo, said to have founded the Oracle at Delphi, 46 ;
— sacerdotal, pol-
ished and methodised the Greek language, 50,
Barley, a symbol of the female aidoia, 28 thrown upon the altar ; as sacrifices.

31 wine made from it by the Egyptians, 31.

;

Battle-Axe, received divine honors, 114 symbol on a coin, 170. ;

Banho, a personification of Night, 57.

Beads, used to reclion time, and also to enclose the sacred symbols, 31.
Bear, a polar constellation, called also the Wagon, <)•].

Bee, sacred to Venus its name in Greek,

; melitta, being a pun on the name of
the Babylonian Venus or Mylitta, 20.
Beetle, or Scarabasus, represented the pervading spirit or ruling providence of
the deity, 128 ; androgynous, 128.
Being, Supreme, or Supreme God, the Zeus of the primitive Greeks, 20, 22 ;

doctrine of the Ophites or serpent worshippers, 16 ; Akmon, 24 ; mode of

existence, 25 ; the primitive pervading spirit and his emanations, 37, 38,

41, 42 source of augury and oracles, 44, 45 ; Jupiter All-prophetic, 47

; ;

active principle of the universe, acting by permanent laws and pre-estab-

lished rules, 51.
Bel, or Belos, worshipped in Assyria, 54 same as Zeus and Baal, 54
; ; father of
Europa, 65 ;composite symbols in temple at Babylon, 144.
Belief, generally shaped by mankind to their dispositions, 126.
Bellerophon, rode the horse Pegasus, 76 ; worshipped Athene as Hippeia, 76.
Bellona, a title of Athene, androgynous, 127, 136.
Bells, in religious worship, 131 worn at the rites of Bacchus, 132, 133; a
;

charm against the destroying power, 131 ; used by the Jews at new moon,
132 employed at eclipses, 132 ; on Hindu statues, 132
;
on priapic figures, ;

133 high priests of Egypt and the Jews hung them to their sacerdotal
;

garments, 133 rung at worship by Brahmans and Roman Catholics, 133

; ;

tolled on occasion of death, 133 fairies and trolls driven away, 183.
;

Belos, or Obelos, the dart of Apollo, g2.

Berbers, the Cyclopeans of Libya probably of that race, 73.

Berekynthian Mother, 166.

Bhagavat-Gita, quoted, 41, 135.
Bird, or egg,which was first ? 13 ; the egg before, 15 emblem of the Spirit or ;

Third Person, 170; the mystic dove and Italian woodpecker, or Yunx tor-
quilla, 171, 172.
Blood, of victims in Lapland, sprinkled on idols, 30 ; offered to Brimo, 102 ; the

corporeal residence of the soul, 119; the shades of the dead tasting it to
replenish their faculties, 119 ; doctrine of Hippocrates, Plutarch, the Pen-
tateuchand Odyssey, 119; the prophetess of Argos tasted it to possess the
knowledge of futurity, 120 probably the origin of the sanctity attributed
;

to red and purple, 120 ; mystic baptism, 123.

Boar, \Ar^ emblem of winter, and symbol of Ares or Mars, slew Adonis, 85 ;

carried in solemn procession, 86 Atys killed by a boar or Mars

;
in that

form, 86; Mars wore the skin of this animal, 87 Frey killed, 87 ; ;
sacri-

Yule, 87 ; pa'ste effigies sacred at feasts, 87

fice at ; Mars represented, 78 ;

abhorrence of the flesh, 87.

 ;;

1 94 Index.

Boat, or sacred ship, employed by Egyptians at festivals for the sun and moon,
133 ;
gods of Babylon so transported, 134 ; a general symbol, denoting the
plastic spirit floating upon the waters, 167, 168.
Body, material, made by the Demiurge for man
he had eaten of the Tree oi
after
Knowledge, 17 soul blunted and obscured, 45.
;

Baotia, settled by Cadmus the Cabeirian god, 10 the temple called the Ser-
;

pent's Head, 15.

Boon Elateia, or driver of cattle, a title of Diana, 102.
Bow, of Apollo, directed the emission of the rays of the sun, g2.
Boxing, in the mystic worship, 152 ; a mode of immolating human victims,
153-
Bracelets, with figures of serpents, 16.
Brahnt, the Great One, source of emanations, 177.
^ra^OTd, " seated upon his lotus throne," 105 the creator, produced from
;

Brahm, the Ineff"able God, 177.

Brahmans, retained in the Dekkan the custom of prostitution at the temples,
55 ; a branch of the great Aryan family, 22 venerated the lotus-flower,
;

ring a bell at prayers, ablutions and other acts of devotion, 133 sell future ;

happiness by retail, 180.

Breast, the right, omitted on symbolical and Amazonian statues, 33 the Sar- ;

matian women said to have extirpated, 33.

Bridle, put by Minerva into the mouth of Pegasus, 128.
Brimo, HekatS, Persephone, Artemis, or Diana, appeased with human victims
and bloody rites, 102 boys whipped at her altar at Sparta, 102 the des-
; ;

troyer, 113.
Brimstone, called Iheion or divine substance, because of its apparent resemblance
in odor and properties to lightning, 135.
Britain, mystic lore of ancient priests of, 3 employed the symbol of the sun
;

and serpent, 15 ; temple-circle at Abury called the Snake's Head, 15

Stonehenge, a circular temple of Apollo, 58 Phoenician and Carthaginian
;

merchants traded there for tin, 68; obelisks in Yorkshire, 69; amulets, 190.
Bromius, a name of Bacchus, 95.
Broivn^ Robert^ Jr. Poseidon, I46.
Bryant, Jacob, derives the term " Lycian" from El- Uk the sun-king, 69 ; theory
of the Centaurs, 77 ; explanation of the goddess Hippa, cannibalism or
human sacrifices, the horse Pegasus and the fish Ceto, 80 ; affirms that
Prometheus was a god of the Colchians, and that the Eagle and Heart were
the crest and emblem of Egypt, 88 tombs or sacred hillocks, 96 states
; ;

that the Greeks mistook the term cohen, a priest, for kuon, a dog, 113, 124
declares the pyramids designed for high altars and temples, 117; considers
the Cabeiri the priests of the Great Mother, 127 ; considers the Gorgon's
head surrounded with serpents a symbol of Divine Wisdom, 130 derived ;

Priapus from Peor and Apis, 132 derived Nymphsea, etc., from ain and
;

omphe, 141 criticised, 161 ; compared with Euhemerus, Sanchoniathon

;

and Eusebius, 162.

Bryant, William CuUen, translation of the Iliad, passim ; renders Lukeios,
Lycian, 69.
Bubastis, the Diana of the Egyptians, 57.
Buccinum, or aquatic snail, androgynous, a Hindu symbol, 34.
Builders will not cut timber in the full of the moon, 100.
 Index. 195

5«//, worshipped by the Egyptians by the title of Mnevis and Apis, 18,35;
the form and symbol of the mystical Bacchus, 18 denoted the generative ;

power, l8 ; an Arabian symbol, 19

said to be the eidolon of Osiris, 19 ; ;

venerated by the Chinese and in Japan, Hindustan, Scandinavia, etc., 20 on ;

coins, 65 the Minotaur the symbol first humanised, 65;

; meant the same —
as the lingam, 56 wingM, the Egyptian and Hebrew Cherubs, 77 a
; ;

symbol for rivers, 98 bore the statue of Zeus at the temple of Hierapolis,
;

167.
Bulla, or disk, worn by the young men of Italy as an amulet, 130.
Bupalos, constructed a statue of Fortune, 84.
Burial, burning and embalming of the dead, 117.
Burning the dead, thus setting free the soul from the body, 117.
Butterfly, ox psyche, symbol of the ethereal soul, 123.
Byhlos, mysteries of Adonis at, 85 Philo of, 163. ;

Egyptian, the sonsof Phtha, 127; worshipped in Phrygia,

Cabeiri, the great gods,
Samothrace, Lemnos, and Tenedos, wherever Vulcan was venerated, 127 ;
said by Bryant have been priests of Cybele, 127
to Zeus or Jupiter, a ;

Cabeirian god, 227 mysteries of Samothrace, 150 mystical names, 150

; ;

further account, 150 said by Sanchoniathon to be sons of Sydyc, 157 ;

;

the Dioscuri said to be the same deities, 157.

Cadmii, or Cadmeians, a people occupying Thebes, 10 said to have been con- ;

ducted to the site of the Cadmeian or citadel by a cow, 35 Bacchus the ;

son of a Cadmeian damsel, 36 ;

probably so denominated from the name of
their god Cadmus, 151.
Cadmillus, Camillus, Casmilus, same as Cadmus in the Samothracian mysteries,

150.
Cadmus, reputed to have colonised Bceotia, 10 ; a deity identical with Thath,
Hermes, and the Phoenician .iEsculapius, 10 a Tyrian, the first teacher of ;

the Bacchic mysteries, 10 his daughter Ino, or Leucothoe, a sea-goddess,

;

II ; —
said to have married an Amazon, 34 probably the same as Cadmil- ;

lus or Casmilus in the mysteries, 150; story purely allegorical, 150; said
to have been changed to a serpent, 150.
Caduceus, the staff or sceptre of Mercury, encircled by two serpents, 114.
Cairns, or hillocks, symbols of consecration at cross-roads, 148.
Calf, the symbol of Epaphus, the son of lo, 36 ;
— the golden, of the Exodus,
54 ; the sacred calf of Bethel carried to Assyria, 148.
Cambyses, King of Persia, conquest of Egypt and cruelty, 44.
Canobus, the filtering-vase his symbol, 121.
Canon, the Phoenician, employed by the Cyclopean builders in constructing the
walls of Mycenae and other great works, 74.
men whose extraordinary powers were re-
Canonisation, a practice of deifying
garded as divine emanations, 153, 154 practicedby the priests of the Syrian ;

goddess at Hierapolis, 172 also by the Roman Catholic Church, 173.

;

Cap, worn by the the Dioscuri, 96, Ii5 by Anubis, 96 a distinction of rank
; ;

among the Scythians, 116 a symbol of freedom and emancipation among

;

the Romans, 116 ; same worn by Mercury and Vulcan, 126.

196 Index.

Capitals of pillars, copied from the seed-vessel of the lotus flower, 109 ; leaves
of acanthus and other plants added by the Greeks, 109 ; Corinthian, derived
from Kgypt [Assyria], 109 not invented from observing a thorn growing
;

round a basket, no Ionic, no ornamented by honeysuckle and eggs and

; ;

anchors, symbols of Venus and Mars, no.

Captives, sacrificed to the Sun-god by the Mexicans, 18.

Carthaginians, had serpent-symbols on their coins, 15 : traded in Britain for

tin, 68 ; Saturn or Kronos, the chief deity, represented on coins as a Centaur
or horse, 78 ; sacrificed their children to their gods, 123.
Castor Z.VL& Pollux, the Great Gods, same as Bacchus and Apollo, 96, 116, 157 ;

the four lines in the Odyssey undoubtedly spurious which relate to their
deification, 157 ; said to have succeeded to the glory of the Dioscuri, 157.
Castrated men, according to Hippocrates, never bald, 79 employed as priests ;

at Hierapolis, the Phrygian temples, and those of Egypt, 174, 175 ; practiced
pederasty, 175.
Cat, killing one punished vifith death by Egyptian magistrates, 41 ; a symbol of
the Moon and Female Principle, 100.
Cathari, Albigenses and Paulicians venerated the agathodtemon serpent, 17.

Caves, temple at Phygal^, with a statute of Despoina, 79 ;

— the ancient tombs,
117; —
temples, 117.
Cecrops, a deified hero, 14 ; fabled to have been both man and woman, 159.
Celestial, or sethereal soul, represented by a psyche or butterfly, 113.
Celestial Love, (see Attraction), the emanation of the Divine Spirit, 38.

Celestial Venus,Venus Urania, or the Heavenly Venus, (called also Aphrodite,

Astarte, Kypris, Anaitis and Atargatis or Derceto, the Syrian goddess)
the designation applied by Herodotus to the Female Principle of the Uni-
verse, 20; called also Alilat or Lilith, 20; represented the female or pas-
sive productive principle, 28, et passim ; symbols, 28 ; represented by the
cow, 35 worship adopted by the Babylonian women, and in Cyprus, Ar-
;

menia, Phrygia, Carthage, Italy and Palestine, and at Eryx, with sexual
rites, 54, 55, by the Persians, 5l a square stone her symbol, 63
67 ; also ; ;

the most ancient of the Fates, 63 mother of the Centaurs, 77 declared by

; ;

Apuleius, the same as Isis, Eleusinian Ceres, and Proserpina, 83 com- ;

prehended by the Phoenician names, Europa and Astarte, 103 armed like ;

Diana in the temples at Cythera and Corinth, 103 called also Hera, 117 ; ;

the pomegranate her symbol, 113; styled by the Delphians the Chariot,
134 represented by the Hermaphrodite, 149 statue at Samothrace, 169.
; ;

Celtic nations, employed oaks as symbols of the Supreme God, 47 temples, ;

circular, 61 ; temple in Zealand, 68 ; temple of Apollo at Stonehenge, 68 ;

the Cyclopes the progenitors of tribes, 74 ; Mercury, the deity of the an-
cient Gauls, 114 ; —
nations burned their dead, 117.
Centaurs, conjectured to be the horse-symbol partly humanised, 76; depicted on
the temple of Isis at Dendera, 77 ; supposed by E. Pococke to have been
named from Candahar, near the Indus, 77 reputed by Bryant to be of the
;

" Nephelim race," 77 ; offspring of Ixion and Nephele, 77 ; the designa-

tion of ships, 77 ; supposed by Hislop to be the progeny of women prosti-

tuted at the temples of Mylitta and Astarte, 77 said by Nonnus to be the ;

offspring of Zeus and the Paphian Venus, 77 how depicted in Lesbos, 77 ;

•

the peculiar form that of the original Satyrs, 78 ; said to be Satyrs, 78 ;

 ;

Index. 197

Jupiter sculptured reposing on one, 81 ; Hercules destroying a Centaur,

82 ; conflict with Theseus, 15S.
Cerastes, a name of Zeus, the god of all, 138.
C«r«OT«;« of devotion not held to be important except as a part of the civil

government, 40.
Ceres, or Demeter, the goddess and guardian of the Eleusinian Mysteries, 4, 22
85 ; wandering, 6 called also Isis in Egypt, Venus and Astarte in Syria,
;

9 called also Demeter or IVlother Earth, 22 name more plausibly derived

; ;

from the Sanskrit Deva-matri, or mother-goddess, 22 the personification ;

of the passive or female productive principle supposed to pervade the earth,

23 ; wife of the omnipotent father, ^ther or Jupiter,
called also Deo, 23 ;

23 ; Hertha by the Germans, 23 the source of legislation, 27 the

called ; ;

poppy consecrated to her, 45 Despoina, her daughter by Neptune, 79

;

— and Proserpina, an allegory invented, 82 invoked by Lucius as Celestial ;

Venus and Proserpina, 83 same as Isis and Proserpina at Cnidos, 83, 157
; ;

— called Hera, 113 the ancient Bacchus said to be her son, 156; Thes-
;

mophoria, 165.
Cesnola Collection, the statue of the Paphian Venus, or a priest, 29.
Ceto, the great fish, sacred to Dagon or Poseidon, 80 : symbol of a ship, 81 ;

the swallowing of Jonah by a great fish, probably his rescue by a ship, 58,
80.
Chaldeans, or Magians, great practitioners of judicial astrology, 53 ; taught the
existence of an universal all-pervading spirit, 63 first a conquering and ;

civilising nation, and afterwards a learned caste, 53 ; Zoroaster probably

a leader or president, 53 their chief entitled Rabbi or Rab Mag, 53
; Mith- ;

raism probably a form of their religion, 53 the Jewish Kabala or tradi- ;

tions derived from them, 53 Julius Caesar assisted in reforming the Calen-
;

dar by Sosigines (son of Sosiosh), 63 knew the heliocentric system, 60.

;

Chaos, descent of Achamoth to impart life to the elements, 16 ; Tartarus a

separate world beyond, 125.
Chaplets of serpents worn by jugglers in North America, 15 ; on the heads of
the symbolical figures on coins, 32 ; of poplar or other plants worn by
Hercules, 95.
Chariot, a title of Venns, 134.
Charts, the wife of Vulcan, 126.
C/5(j«;«and his boat, a late fiction, 8 taken from the Egyptian judgment of
;

Amenti, 8 ; introduced into the Orphic mysteries, 8 Horus the original, ;

134.
CteVoK, the Centaur, the son of the Centaur Kronos, 77.
Cherub, a winged bull, an Egyptian symbol, 77.
Children, ?,3.tVirx\ or Kronos devouring his own, 24; Ahaz burned his in the

fire, 122 ; sacrificed by the Carthaginians and other nations to their gods,

123; symbols in Northern countries, 147 ;

named from deities, 155 ;
how
Odin named his, 154, 155.

Chimcera, a composite symbol including the goat, lion and serpent, gi, 129,
134.
China, and Chinese, mode of representing ideas, 6 Tartar princes carry a ;

serpent as a military standard, 14; symbols on coins, 15 ; Palace of the

horned Bull, 20 —
employed rosary, 31
; had the symbol and story of the ; —
 ;

198 Index.

tortoise, 35 ; sacrificed to the spirits of the air, mountains, and rivers, 40

the sectaries of Fohi have added allegorical fables, 40 ; have no dogmatical
theology, or persecution for opinion, 40 ; represent the sun as a cock in a
circle, 70 ; tombs, edifices, and utensils adorned virith the figure of a lion,
75 ;
placed sacred images upon the lotus-flower, 105.
Chlamys, hanging from the shoulder of Jupiter, 129 ; symbol of deification,

173-
Choiropsale, a designation of Bacchus, 10.
Choral dance of the stars symbolized by the mystic dance, 138.
Christ, Ophite legend, 16 ; generated by the Supreme Being from Sophia, or
pneuma, the Divine Wisdom, 16 entered ; into the man Jesus at baptism, 17.

C/imft'3», teachers taught the apocalypseof the Mysteries, 4; — sectaries adopted

serpent-worship, 15;— antiquaries' opinion of the of Serapis, — cross 30; so-
cieties possibly have been guilty of the crimes imputed
supposed to the to
Bacchanalians, — writers of the 3rd and 4th centuries turned the
56; histor-
ical books of the New Testament into 161 — writers accepted allegor)', ;

the fragment imputed to Sanchoniathon, 163, 164.

Chronos, or Time, said to be the same as Kronos, or Saturn, 25 ; this identity
doubted, 73.
Chrusaor, or Chrusaorus, names of Apollo, 92.
Chryses, a priest of Apollo, wore only the fillet, or diadem, 31.
Circles, the ancient temples, 60 sometimes enclosed in a square,
; 63.
Circular temple, of Vesta, at Rome, 27 ;
primitive, 60 ; the Stonehenge, 68 ; of
Bacchus Sebarius, in Thrace, 69 of Mars, 6g. ;

Circumcision, practiced by Egyptians, 89 Jewish proselytes, 121. ;

—
CistcB, mystic chests, or baskets, contained aserpent, egg, and phallus, 15; mystic

tomb of Bacchus, 96 —
contained phallic emblems, 96.
;

City of the Sun, in Egypt, the Bull Mnevis worshipped, 19 Baal-bek, in Syria, ;

148.
Cleanthes censured Aristarchus for impiety for publishing the doctrines of
Pythagoras respecting the solar system, 59.
Cleopatra, apotheosis, 15 fiction of her death from the asp, or urseus,
; 15.
Cnossus, coins of, marked by a square, or labyrinth, to denote the Celestial
Venus, 64.
Cobra de Capella, naga, or hooded-snake, the mystical serpent of the Egyptians,
Phoenicians, and Hindus, 16. See Snake, Hooded.
Cock, offering of Socrates to ^Esculapius, 4 ; crest, or comb, on the hood of the
sacred serpent, 16 ; sacred to the sun, and herald of his coming, 70 ; Chi-
nese place it in a circle, to represent the sun, 70, 71 ; a favorite symbol on
Grecian monuments, 113 the symbol of Cadmilus, or the Pelasgian Mer-
;

cury, in the Samothracian Mysteries, 150.

god of the Samothracian Mysteries, 24
Ccehim, a ; the same as Serapis, Taautos,
and Saturn, 24.
Coins, ancient, sacred symbols, 8 ;
portraits of kings not placed on them, 8 ;

put in tombs with and drachma, 8 antiquity of coining,

vases, the obolos, ;

8 ; the study of them the only means by which we can obtain a competent
knowledge of the mystic or Orphic faith, 8; serpent- symbols, 15 ; apotheosis
of Cleopatra, 15 aphrodisiac devices, 29
; with the cross found in the ;
—
temple of Serapis, 30 ; the cow-symbol, 36 ; a square impressed on them, to
 Index. 1 99
denote the Celestial Venas, 63 Saturn or probably Poseidon, represented
;

by Carthaginians, Thracians, and Macedonians as a Centaur, or horse, 78 ;

— Carthfea, 89 the Chimtera, 91 ;mixed symbols of Apollo and Bacchus, ;

95; fish-symbol, iii elephant and cornucopiee, 136 palm-tree emblem,

;
;

iSi, et passim.
Colchians, worshipped Prometheus, 88 an Egyptian nation, 88. ;

Collar, shaped like a serpent, put on the neck of human victims when sacrificed,
in Mexico, 15.
College, of Augurs, in Rome, 51 ; — of Chaldeans, or Magians, 53 — of ^Egyp- ;

tiau priests, 134,

Columns, and capitals, representing the lotus-flower, 105 ; Trajan's, 106 ; — sa-

cred symbols, iii.

Comb, of a cock, on the head of the agathodsemon serpent, 16 ;
— woman's, the
kteis gunakeios, or symbol of the female principle, 28. •

Comedy, consisted principally of imitations, both of men and of the symbolical

animals, 152.
Composite order merely a combination, in.
Concha Veneris, a symbol of Venus Urania, or the female power, 28.
Cone, vailed (cortina), 95, 147; — pine, 112, 113.
Conical stones, represented on Tyrian medals, 147 ; amberics, ambrosial
stones, logging rocks, 147.
Consecration, the serpent a symbol of, 14 fire and water touched by the bride
;

as a form, 26 sword of Julius Csesar consecrated, 114 weapons of King

; ;

Saul, 114 ; the sword of Goliath, 115 ; —

not deification, but canonisation,
173-
Consuls, Roman, their bodies painted red during triumphs, 120.
Coptos, phallic statue of Osiris, 58 ; statue of Horus, 58.
Corinth, sexual rites, 55 ; coins impressed by a square to represent the
of,

Celestial Venus, 64 ; armed image of Venus or Diana in the temple, 103 ;

capitals derivedfrom Egypt, 109.

Corinthian Order, 109, 1 10 brought from Egypt (Assyria), 109.
;

Cormorant, the symbol of Hercules, 75.

Comucopice, given to the local genii, 87 held by Hercules, 95 ; in the ; tail of

the elephant, on coins, 136 ; in the hand of CybelS, 145 ; expression of

deification, 173.
Cortina, 95, 146, 147.
Corybantes, 157 ; said to be children of Minerva, by the Sun, and priests of the
Sun, 175.
Cosmogony or theogony, 9; exhibits the first system of philosophy in every nation,
2 the maintenance of order in a state requires a demiurgus or chief magis-
;

trate, and in the universe a Supreme God, 2 ; all nations, from the Baltic to
the Ganges, have their mystic lore on the subject, 3.

Country-feast of the Dionysia, mode of its celebration, 30.

Cow, a symbol of the Celestial Venus and Isis, 45; employed by the Phoenicians,
35 guided the Cadmeians, 35
;
revered by the Africans and Hindus,
;

36 ; the Adumbla, or white cow of the Scandinavians, 36 ; lo, 36 ;

golden
heifer, 147.
Crab, the symbol of Diana and the female principle, 99.
Creation and destruction symbolised by Saturn devouring his own children.
 ;

200 Index.

24 ; the first emanation of light preceded by darkness, 57 ; merely renova-

tion, 116.
Creative Spirit, pervading, tlie original producer of order, fertility, and organisa-
tion, 37 ; — plastic, universally diffused and expanded, 41 ; every production
of earth, water and participated essence, 41 —air, by the in its ; typified
mistletoe, 47 — the source of astrological science,
; 51.
Creator of all Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurge, 16 Eros, the
things, ; first-begotten
love,or Mystic Bacchus, 21 — the discretion of ; left religious vi^orship to his
creatures, 39 — supposed by the Jews
; have become national and to their
peculiar God, 54 — male, the palm, 151
; said by Plato be the typified ; to
Eternal and Unbegotten 158 — Brahma, deity, ; 177.
Crescent, a device on the head of the Greek and Roman statutes of the bull
Mnevis or Apis, 20 worn an amulet, 100 — expressing horns,
; as ; 130,
Crest, or comb of a cock, placed on the head of the sacred serpent-symbol, 16.
Crete, Neptune, or Poseidon, worshipped, 64, 68 human sacrifices, 64 Ariadne ; ;

carried away by Theseus, 66, 158; Jupiter worshipped as Lucetius and

Diespiter, 70; Curetes, the priest-caste, 156.
•Criobolium, the slaughter of a ram for the Mithraic baptism of blood, 123.
Cronos, Kronos, or time. See Saturn.
Cross, or circle, or tau ^, representing the planet Venus, worshipped as her em-
blem, 30, 58, 112 found on the Isiac tablets, 105, 112.
;

Cross, on coins, 65 ; at the sides and intersections of highways, 149.

Cross-roads, consecrated by cairns or hillocks of stone, thrown together in honor
of Mercury, 148 ;
— in later times unhallowed, 149 ;
— burial-place of sui-
cides, 149.

•Crowns, of olive, 17 ; of turrets, 27 ; of beads, 32 ; laurel and olive, 32 ; of

flowers, 32 ; of poppy on statues of Ceres, 45 ; of oak and fir, 48 ; of
parsley, 153 ; Theagenes, the boxer, crowned fourteen hundred times and
canonised, 153.
Cuckoo, 171.
Cunnus diaboli, a cleft or fissure in the ground, symbolical of the female prin-
ciple, 47.
Cupid,ih.e mystic, or first-begotten love, {ste Attraction,) 112; wielding the
mask of Pan, 144.
Curetes, a priest-caste, 156.
Cursing, unknown in ancient worship, 39 ;
priestess refused to curse Alcibiades,
31.
Cybele, orKubele, the great mother, orgies of, 9 ; crowned with the olive, 17 ;

worshipped by the Phrygians and Syrians, 27 ; so called because represented

by the cubical figure, 27 ; identified with Diana, Isis, Anaitis, Mylitta, and
the Celestial Venus, 67 ; sexual worship, 67 ; the same as Hippa, 80 ; the
Phrygian fable, 86 ; cymbals
her worship, 131 pantheic figure, 145. in ;

Cyclopeans, or Cyclopes, Neptune, or Poseidon, their reputed father in Lybia,

64 probably an Ethiopian race, and offered human victims, 65, 74, 80
;

reputed by Hesiod to be sons of Heaven and Earth, 73 probably of the ;

same race as the Berbers and Phoenicians, 73 ; a pastoral race in Lybia and
Sicily a race of giants, who introduced a massive style of architecture, 74
; ;

progenitors of the Gauls, Illyrians, and Celtic tribes, 74 ; built massive

buildings, round towers, etc., 74 were Ophites, 74 ; probably akin to the ;
 1

Index. 20

Ilj'k-sos of Egypt, 74 ; devised their structures after the style of caves,

117.
Cymbals, used in the worship of Cybele, 131.
Cypselus, the ark, 103.
Cyrus, name said to denote the sun, 154 ; more properly from the Sanskrit
ICuru, 154.

D.

Dcedalus, said to have built the Labyrinth in Crete, to confine the Minotaur, 64 ;

made a statue of Venus-Architis, 149.

Damon, the nous, or divine emanation, the familiar of each individual, u8 ; a
divinity placed in every man to initiate him into the mysteries of life, 118 ;

converses immediately with but very few, but gives signs to most, from
which is derived the art of vaticination, 119 souls become daemons, 119. ;

Dagon, the same as Poseidon or Neptune, and Cannes or Ana, 65.

Dahaka, the serpent or dragon-king of the A vesta, 62 same as Zohak, 62. ;

Daimon Promathaos Aithiops, 88.

Z'aw^j', in the Grecian temples, 50; circular, instituted by the Peleiades and
Amazons, 34 symbol of the regular motion of the universe, 138
; of the ;
—
gods Pan, the author and director, 13S of the mimetic kind, 138 the gods ; ;

taking part, 139 Hindu dance to the sun, 139 Knosian dance to Jupiter,
; ;

and Nyssian to Bacchus, 139 originally imitative and mystic representa-

;

tions, 152.

Dancing, an imitative art, showing things arcane and expressing things occult,
138, 152 ; a part of the ceremonial in all mystic rites, 139.

Dorics, ancient Persian coins, 94.

Daughter, or Kore, a title of Proserpina, 82, 83, 157 ;
— of the sun, a Hindu title

of the river Jumna, 98 ; title given by jEschylus, Euripides, and others to

the moon, gg.
Dead, burned by the Greeks, Scythians, and Celtic nations, and by the
Hindus, 117 ; embalmed by the Egyptians, 117 ; deposited in subterranean
caverns, 117 evocation by Ulysses, lig.
;

Deer, symbol of Diana in the elementary worship, probably explaining the

metamorphoses of Actaeon, 81 an accessory symbol of Bacchus, 81 in the
; ;

hand of a Centaur, 81 lion devouring, represented the heat withering the

;

productions of the earth, 82 ; sacrificed to Isa, loi.

Deifying, or canonising, of men, 154 ; derived from the idea that all great quali-
ties proceeded from particular emanations of the Deity, 154 Odin, 155 ; ;

the Theban Bacchus, 156 Castor and Pollux, 157 ; practice facilitated by
;

the belief that the universal male generative principle might impregnate a
human female without the cooperation of a male, 158 practiced under the ;

Roman and Macedonian Empires, 164, 224, 227 largely carried on at the ;

temple of the Syrian goddess, 173 how expressed by symbol, 176. ;

Deity, a particular one supposed to preside over the sun, moon, stars, earth,
waters, etc., I Apis supposed to be an incarnation, ig lamps, emblems,
; ;

26 pleased by all expressions of gratitude and submission, 39, 40 ; Krishna,

;

the incarnate, 41, 135 symbols worshipped instead, 42 wine supposed to

; ;

be a medium of communication with, 45, 50 ; ancient Persians deemed it

 ;

202 Index.

unworthy of his majesty to be represented by a definite form, 6l ; symbol

placed in the temple-enclosures, 63 the duel and ordeal by fire and water
;

regarded as a direct appeal, 115 human soul an emanation, 118 ; initiated

;

persons acquired the knowledge of the affinity, 119 ; the higher soul receives
impulses, 118 ; Force and Wisdom attributes of, 127 ; Brahm, 177.
Delphi, the Greeks, after the Persian war, rekindled their fires from the altar,
26 ;
prophetic enthusiasm produced by exhalations from the earth, 46
oracle founded by Hyperboreans, 46 women officiated, 46 ; named from
;

delphus, the womb, 47 plundered by the Phocians, 50 favored most those

;
;

who paid best, especially Philip of Macedon, 51 oracle belonged equally ;

to Apollo and Bacchus, 94 commanded women to be whipped at the fes-

;

tival ofBacchus at Alea, 102.

Delta, the letter A, a symbol of the Female Principle, 28.
Demeter, or Deva-Matri, see Ceres.
Demigods, supposed to be born of women without the cooperation of the other
sex, 158.
Demetrius, received by the Athenians with Bacchic display, 98.
Demiurge, Ilda-Baoth, 16.
Demodoeus, song of the loves of Mars and Venus in the Odyssey, an interpola-
tion, 126.
Dendera, or Tentyra, figure of a Centaur in the temple of Isis, 77.
Dendrites, a title of Bacchus, 144.
Deo, a name of Ceres, perhaps from Deva, 23.
Derceto, or Atargatis, the Venus of Ascalon, represented half as a woman and
half as a fish, in Phoenicia, but as a woman at Bambyke or Hierapolis, ill.
Destroyer, Typhon, 71 ; in the mythology of India, 72 ; a designation of Jupiter,
73 ; Apollo, gi ; Hercules, 92 ; Brimo, 102 ; Siva, 103.
Destruction, the coordinate of generation, personified by Proserpina, 82 ; Mars,
god of, 85, 87 ; symbolised by the boar, 87 ; by the fly, 89 ; by the dog, 116.
Deucalion, supposed image in the temple of the Syrian goddess, II7.
Deus, Dseus, or Zeus (eu diphthong) the supreme god, 2,
Devadasis, " the women of the idol," belonging to the Hindu temples in the
Dekkan, 55 ; a Dravidian custom, afterward retained by the Brahman con-
querors, 56.
Devil, cloven foot, a conceit derived from the ox-foot of Bacchus or Dionysus, 66.
Devils, Baal-Zebub, the Phoenician God, styled Prince of, 89, 90.
Devourer, or Omadius, the eater of raw flesh, a title of Bacchus, 102 ; the North-
ern deity, Garmr, 116.
Dia, Ariadne, slain by Diana at the island, 158.
Diadem, or fillet, a mark of sovereignty, 31 ; borne on his sceptre by Chryses,
the priest of Apollo, 31 ; of obelisks or rays on heads of kings or emperors
on coins, 69.
Diaguras, considered guilty of atheism, as having revealed and calumniated
the doctrines taught in the Mysteries, 40.
Diana, and Brimo, sometimes represented as a
(also Artemis, Anaitis, Bubastis,
virgin goddess, and sometimes identical with Isis, Ceres, Rhea, Cybele, and
the Celestial Venus), the statue of the Amazon at Atliens, whose worship
was introduced by the Shepherds, 34 the sister of Apollo, also Bubastis, 57 ;
;

the Mygal6, or shrew-mouse, her symbol, 57 killed Ariadne, 66 the wor-

; ;
 Index. 203
ship of the Ephesian or Amazonian Goddess accompanied by the deflora-
tion of women, 67
represented by a simple column, 70 ; the deer her
;

symbol, as mother of fecundity, 81 ; the Moon, 81, 139 metamorphoses of ;

Actaeon, both male and female, 99

81 ; called the Mother of the ;

World, the Daughter and Sister of the Sun, 99 the regulator of pas- ;

sive generation, 99 the sea-crab her symbol, 99

; as goddess of ;

the moon, tempered aethereal spirit and earthly matter to make them
harmonise and unite, 100 sudden death proceeded from her as well
;

as Apollo, 100; — Juno and Lucina, personifications of the Moon, 100;

statues clothed, loi ; attribute of perpetual virginity apparently denoted
by the name Artemis, loi ; the name a contraction of Diviana, lOl ; repre-
sented with three bodies, also by a female form with phallic radii, loi ; her
figures at Ephesus an assemblage of almost every symbol, like Isa and ;

with many
breasts, loi Brimo, the Scythian and Tauric Diana, the De-
;

stroyer, 102 appeased with human victims, 102 ; boys whipped at her altar
;

in Sparta, 102 same as Hekate and Persephone, 102 styled Tauropola,

; ;

and Boon Elateia, the driver of bulls, 102

comprehended with the Celes-;

tial Venus, Europa, and Astarti as the deity of the Moon, 103 represented ;

winged on the ark of Cypselus, 103 ; riding on a griffin, 103 represented ;

on coins accompanied by a dog, 113 called also Bendeia and Dictynna,

;

130 her bust upon a comucopiae held by Cybele, 145 ; the palm-tree sacred
;

to her and Apollo, 152.

Dictators, Roman, their bodies painted red at triumphs, 120.
DidumiBus, a designation of Apollo, 82, 98, gg, 144, 148.
Diespiter, or Father of Day, a Cretan name of the supreme god, 70.
Dinos, the principle of circular motion in the universe, held and taught by
Socrates and Diagoras, 60.
Diomedes, his hippai, or mares, an order of priestesses, 80.
Dionl, the female Zeus, or Dis, 23, 28 ; mother of Venus, 28 ; associated with
Zeus at the ancient oracular temple of Dodona, 28, 171.
Dionysus, ste Bacchus.
Dioscuri, the great gods, g6 ; said to be Castor and Pollux, deified mortals and
brothers of Helen, g6, 157born from an egg, 96, 157 wore the Phrygian
; ;

cap, surmounted with stars or asterisks, 116, 157; confounded with the
ancient personifications of the diurnal and nocturnal sun, or the morning and
evening star, 158 originally Phoeaician divinities, 157
; described by San- ;

choniathon as the Cabeiri, Corybantes, and Samothracians, who first invented

the mystic ship, or boat, 157.
Diphues, a title of Bacchus, denoting his androgynous nature, 90, 99.
Disa, or Isa, the Scandinavian goddess, represented between two serpents, 15 ;
represented by a pyramid surmounted by the cross and circle, 70 resem- ;

blance to Diana, loi ; the reindeer sacrificed to her, loi ; a conical figure
enveloped in a net, 146 ; the golden heifer her symbol, 147.
Disk, winged, and two asps placed over the porticoes of Egyptian temples, 15 ;

also on Carthaginian coins, 76 ; represented the sun, 130.

Dithyrambus and Thriambus, names of Bacchus, to.
Diurnal Sun, Apollo, 94 legend confounded with the story of Castor and Pol-
;

lux, 157.
Diviana, Etruscan name of Diana, loi.
204 Index.

Divine truths disclosed at the Greater Mysteries, 4 honors conferred on ; —

JIacedonian kings of Syria and Egypt, 7 honors paid to serpents, 14 ;
— ;

— nature, all animals and even vegetables supposed to be impregnated

with, 41 ; — honors paid to animals in Egypt, 44 — mind, the human
;

soul supposed to be an emanation, 45, 118; — emblems, implements of

war, 115 ;
— particle supposed to reside in the blood, 119 — Wisdom, per-
;

sonified by Neith and Athene, 127, I2g.

Diviners, of North America, make girdles and chapleta of serpents, 14.
Divus, or DiFos, the title of a deified, or canonised, Roman Emperor, and also
a person canonised by the early Christians, 174.
Dodona, the seat of the most ancient oracular temple, and presided over by
Zeus, or Jupiter, and Dione, the parents of Aphrodite, 28, 171 ; oracle
Pelasgian, or, rather, Druidical, 47 ; responses delivered by Selli, or priests
who pretended to receive them from oaks, 47, 48 ; women replaced the
Selli, 48 ; the site said to have been selected by a priestess of Amun, from
Egypt, 48.
ZJffo-, accompanies Diana, 113; the symbol of Hermes, Mercury, and Anubis,
113 the Greeks said to have mistaken the name of the animal, kuon, for
;

that of a priest, cohen, 113 sacred to Mars, 116.;

Dolphin, a female symbol, 66, 79, 176.

Doric order, no; the only columns known to the ancient Greeks, and derived
from the Nelumbo, or lotus, no.
Double power, male and female, symbolised, 29, 98. See Androgynous.
Double-Sexed Deity, 32; the Amazons, votaries, 32 ; Freya and the Paphian
Venus, 32 symbolised, 34 the deities Hercules, Bacchus, Diana, 98 et
; ; ;

passim. See Androgynous.

Dove, a symbol of the double sex, 2g sacred to Aphrodite, 2g, 170; in the
;

Cesnola Collection, 29 ; held by the Despoina, 79 ; on the head of the

Mediator, 167.
Dragon (see Serpent) of the .^Ether, Zeus, the father of Dionyisus Sabazius, 11 )

carried as a military standard, 16 a Chinese device, 35 ; tan or tanin, in

;

Hebrew, translated serpent, dragon, and whale, but probably means a

saurian, 72 ; form assumed by Jupiter when visiting the chamber of Kor8-
Persephoneia, 156.
Dramatic poetry originating from the ancient games, 152.
Druids, the ancient priests of Britain, twenty years required to educate, 3 em- r

ployed the disk and serpents, 15 Dodona an oracle, 49 a gloomy hier-

; ;

archy, 50.
Dijden, the poet, believed in judicial astrology, and computed the horoscope of
his son, 52,
Dseus, Deus, or Zeus {eu diptliong), the supreme god, 2.

Duel, as a deciding of civil dissensions and personal disputes, regarded as an

appeal directly to the deity, 115.

E.

Eagle, the bird of Jupiter, 75 ; fighting a serpent, or destroying a hare, probably

represented the destroying attribute, 75 ; alone, the symbol of creation,
preservation, and destruction, 75 a symbol of Egypt, and the heart the
;

emblem, 88 ; the fable of Prometheus thus explained by Bryant, 88 part ;

 ;

Index. 205

of a composite figure, 103 ; a symbol of deity, 170; the vehan of Siva,

177.
Earth, regarded originally as an object of worship, i De-meter or Ge-meter, ;

Mother Earth, 22; Ceres, the female or productive, power of, 23, 27; called by
the ancient Germans Hertha, 23 —
or Terra, and Coslum, the great gods of
;

the Samothracian Mysteries, 24 ; Vesta, as well as Ceres, a personification,

27 ; sustained by the inmost spirit, 41 ; intoxicating exhalations produced
prophetic enthusiasm, 46 ; supposed to have been acted upon by the all-
pervading spirit through the moon, 81 periodically liable to destruction ;

and creation, dissolution and renovation, 117.

Echidna, a serpent, or giant, 14 mother of the Scythians, half woman and half
;

viper, 14.
Ecstasy, fits of, enabled the human soul to pierce bej'ond the encumbrances of
the body, 45 ; the Pythian priestesses and inspired votaries of Bacchus, 45 ;

— containing prophetic power, 45.

Eels, 176.
Egersis, or revival of Adonis, celebrated at Athens, 88.
Egg, the symbol of organic matter in its inert state, 13 ; carried in procession at
the celebration of the Bacchic Mysteries, 13 ; consecrated in the Bacchic
Mysteries as the image of that which generated and contained all things in
itself, 13 ; was it first, or the bird ? 13 ;
— before all things, 13 ; the serpent
coiled round to express incubation, 14 symbol of a bull breaking the ;

shell and animating the contents with his breath, denoted the creation of
the world, 20 ; cap of the Dioscuri (the Phrygian cap) derived from, 116 j

the psyche or butterfly appears in the form of a grub, 123.

Eggs, and anchors, in the Ionic capital, 1 10; — of the Scarabseus, or black
beetle, 128 ; statue of Apollo sitting upon, 147.
Egypt, see jEgypt.
Egyptians, see Egyptians,
Eilithyia, Diana, or the Moon, presiding over child-birth, 100.
Elementary, the primitive religion supposed to have been, i ; the mystic or
symbolical worship engrafted, 20 ; Neptune, or Poseidon, not a deity of this

character, 68 ; summary in the address of Agamemnon, and in the invoca-

tion of the Athenian women celebrating the Thesmophoria, 165.

Elephant, 18 ; skin of, depicted on Minerva's head, 136; the form of Ganesa
the Hindu God of Wisdom, 136 ; represented with bull's horns, 136.
Elephanta, sculptured caverns in, 33 ; figure of a double-sexed or Amazonian
deity, 33.
Eleusis, Mysteries of (or Eleusinia), more celebrated than other mysteries, 3
under the guardianship of Ceres and Proserpina, 4, 22 ; called also teletai,

endings, ot finishes, 4 two degrees, 4 the first, or LESSER, a kind of holv

; ;

purification, 4 ; the greater, a probation required, 4 ; in the greater, the

initiatewas made acquainted with the first principles of religion, 4 the ;

cock offered to .(Esculapius, 4 the end, the knowledge of God, and noetic
;

or spiritual matters, 4 impiety to divulge anything thus learned, 5, 40

; ;

Alcibiades condemned to death for such impiety, 5 extremely difficult to ;

obtain accurate information of the doctrines, 5 ; the doctrines conveyed

under allegories and symbols, 5 the completely-initiated called inspectors,
;

Epoptai or Ephori (seers or clairvoyant), 5 said to have been introduced ;

2o6 Index.

into Greece 175 years before the Trojan war, 11 ; declared by Plutarch to
have been established by Eumolpus, II no trace of them in the Iliad ox ;

Odyssey, ri Orphic Hymns were probably litanies used, 11 the phallus and
; ;

its meaning revealed among the last discoveries to the initiated, 12 ; the ser-
pent the great symbol, 14 dedicated to the female or passive powers of pro-
;

duction, 22 statue of Bacchus, 26

; said by Herakleitus to have been in-
;

stituted (with the circular dance) by Eumolpus, who led the Amazons
against Athens, 34 ; Diagoras, and probably Socrates, accused of atheism
for revealing and calumniating the doctrines taught, 40 ; the only part of
the Grecian worship that possessed any vitality, 40 preceded by ; initiation
a solemn ablution, 121 symbol of the ram explained, 150.
;

Emanations, the system based on the principle that all things were of one sub-
stance, from which they were fashioned, and into which they were again
dissolved, 41 divine honors paid to animals and plants as being such, 41
;
;

augury originating from the system, 44 the human ; soul, 45 ; the basis of
judicial astrology, 51-53; rays of light typified by obelisks, 69; el

passim.
Einhleras, see Symbols.
Emperor, of China, sacrifices to the Sovereign of Heaven, 40.
Emperors, Roman, the heads of, on coins, surrounded with a diadem of obelisks,
or rays, in token of their deification, 69, 163.
End of the Mysteries, the knowledge of God, etc., 4.
England, ironical method proving William I. the Conqueror, and William III.,
to have been the same person, 107.
Enigma and fable, the custom of the ancients, 5 et passim. ;

Enthusiasm, enabled the human soul to pierce beyond the encumbrance of the
body, 45 felt by the Pythian priestesses and inspired votaries of Bacchus,
;

45 produced at Delphi by exhalations from the earth, 46 women were

; ;

capable of the delirium, 46 of the Greeks, of the gay and festive kind, 50.
;

Epaphus, the mystic God, the same as Apis, and son of Jupiter and lo, 36.
Epidauriaiis, kept a serpent to represent yEsculapius, 15.
Epoptai, Ephori, inspectors, or seers, the candidates inducted into the Greater
Mysteries, as having learned the wisdom of the Gods, 4, 5.
Erichthonius, a deified hero, 14 ; offspring of Athene, or Minerva, and He-
phaistos, 77.
Eros, love, or attraction, a character of Priapus, 13 ; sprung from the Egg of
Night, 13 ; the father of gods and men, 13 ; the mystic Bacchus, 22 ;

celestial love, 38.

Erythrcean, or Arabian sea or ocean, the Egyptian symbols derived from some
people beyond, log.
Eryx, in Sicily, temple of the Phoenician Astarte, or Venus Erycina, 55 a ;

thousand sacred prostitutes kept there, 55 the deity worshipped by Roman

;

women, 55.
Etruscans, communicated their religion and language to the Romans, 51.
Euhemerus, fraudulently solved the myths as historical, 162, 177 derived con- ;

siderable credit from the disgraceful example of Macedonian kings and

Roman emperors, 164.
Eumolpus, an old sacerdotal bard, 11 ; said by Plutarch to have introduced the
Eleusinian mysteries, 1 1 ; said by Plato to have led the Amazons to Athens,
 Index. 20,7

34 ; mentioned by Clement as one of the Hyk-sos, or shepherds of Egypt,

34 ; credited by Herakleitus with having instituted the Eleusinian Mys-
teries, 34.

Eusebiiis, gave the example by which ecclesiastical writers justified holy lying,
164.
Euivpa, transportation to Crete, 65 the daughter of Agenor or Belus, the ;

Phoenician god, 65 ; the same as Astarte, the deity of the Moon, Diana
and the Celestial Venus, 103.
Europe, perforated beads found in, 31 ; oracle established, 49; the lion on
sepulchral monuments, 75 ; image of Isa in the North like that of
Diana, loi.
Evergreens, Dionysiac plants, i. e., symbols of the generative power and im-
mortality, 32.
Evil, Ahriman the potentate, 62, 72 ; Typhon or Seth, 71 ; material fire, 71 ;

supposed to be a self-existing property, 72 the cask, 73. ;

Exanetus, of Agrigentum, won the race in the ninety-second Olympiad, 153.

Execration, unknown to the public worship of the ancients, 39.
Expiatory, the Egyptian sacrifices, 50 ; the bloody rites of Brimo, the whip-
ping of the Spartan boys at the altar of Diana, and of the Arcadian women
at Alea, and human sacrifices, 102.

Eye of Horus, struck out and swallowed by Typhon, 58, 59.

/, the digamma, 58, 157.

Fables, poetical, occupied the place of historical truth in the earlier accounts of
all nations, 2 ; the ancients wrapped up in enigma their thoughts concern-
ing nature, or the origin of things, 6 and Odyssey make no ;
the Iliad
mention of the mystic and bear no trace of the symbolical style, II
deities, ;

of the Amazons, 33 of Bacchus, born at Thebes, 35

; of the Sun sucking ;

the white cow AdunibU, 36 of the birth of Horus while both his parents
;

were in the womb of their mother Rhea, 58 of Ariadne, 66 of Atys and ; ;

Adonis, 67 of Ganymedes, the lines in the Iliad spurious, 86 of Jupiter

; ;

and Europa, 103 of future existence, incoherent, made up by the Greeks

;

from various sources, 124 mention made by Virgil, 125 Greek, 159, 162 ;
; ;

based on the doctrine of Emanations, 177.

Fairies driven away by church bells, 133.
Fanaticism of the )Q^-a, 41.
Fanina, the Phceaix of the North, 86.
Fasting required in the performing of religious rites, 175.

Fates, the Celestial Venus, or Aphrodite-Urania, declared to be the most ancient,

63 ; sculptured, 73 Fortune one of them, 84.
;

Father, of gods and men, Eros, Attraction, or Priapus, 13 ; the Pan-genetor, 12;
the mystic Bacchus, or first-begotten love, Eros Protogonos, 21 ; the Orphic
Mysteries dedicated to him, 22 ; Kronos, or Zeus, the unknown, 22 ; mind
of, self-generated, 22 ; ^ther or Jupiter, 23 ; of Ouranos, Akmon, 24 ; of
Kronos, or Saturn, Ouranus, or Heaven, 25 ; of All, invoked by Agamem
non, ro5 ;
—
God, 169.
Fauns and satyrs, the goat-symbol partly humanised, 21, 79, 140.
 ;

2o8 Index.

i<ctnale principle, or deity, or passive power, personified by the Celestial Venus,

or Great Mother, 20, 2S ; the Mysteries dedicated to, 22 ; Ceres, a personi-
fication, also Juno, Dione, and Hertha, 23 ; the fecundation by j^ther, the
Omnipotent Father, 23 ; Rhea, Isis, Astarte, and Ops, 24 ; water a general
symbol, 25, 42; Vesta, as well as Ceres, a personification, 27 ; Cybele, the
Universal Mother, the more general personification, 27, 193 ; enigmatical
representations, the Concha Veneris, fig-leaf, barley-corn, and letter Delta,
28 ; the dove, or pigeon, sparrow, and, perhaps, the polypus, also symbols,
29 ; the cross, or tau, a symbol, 30 ; also the myrtle, 32 ; Amazons, wor-
shippers of the Great Mother, 34 the cow-symbol, 35 Adumbla, 36 Isa, ; ; ;

37 supposed to possess a peculiar divine virtue, 47 personified by My-

; ;

litta in Assyria, and Aphrodite in Greece, 54 Night, or Athyr, the source

;

of all things, also a personification, 56 a square stone the primitive sym-

;

bol, 63 ; the square, labyrinth, and fish, all symbols, 66 ; Ariadne, a personi-
fication,67 personified by the ancient goddess Hippa, 79 also by the
; ;

Ephesian Diana, 81, 89, 91, gg, 101 by Venus and Libera, 83 and by ; ;

Isis, 83 the cat and the rabbit also symbols, 100

; personified by Isa, or ;

Disa, lOl ; represented by the lotus, 110; ihe fish on coins, or as part of
the composite figure of Derceto, a lepresentation, iii ;
pomegranate a
symbol, 113 ; also the aegis, or goat-skii-., 130 ; the boat and the chariot,

I33i 134 ; figured by aquatic plants, 136 ; the nymphs considered as emana-
tions, 141 ; Venus-Architis, 149 ; Syrian goddess, 166.
Fertility, or fecundity, Proserpina the goddess of, 83.

Festival, great phallic, the 1st ofMay, among the ancient Britons and Hindus,
12 the country-feast of Bacchus and Phallephoric procession, 30 crosses
; ;

worn at in honor of the gods, 32 deemed by Plato a time when allowable ;

—
to drink wine to drunkenness, 45 ; the Juul, or Yule, in Scandinavia, a
boar offered to Frey, 87.
Fig, an emblem of the Male Principle, 29 ; borne in the processions of Bac-
chus, 30.
Fig-leaf, an enigmatical representation of the most distinctive characteristic of
the female sex, 2S.
Fillet, or diadem, the badge of sovereignty, 32 ; borne by Chryses, the jiriest of

Apollo, 32.
Filtering-vase, the representation of Canobus, 121.
Fir, consecrated to Pan, 48,
Fire, the element supposed to contain the male or active productive principle
of nature, 25 the principle of motion, 26, 127
; touching it a part of the ;

marriage ceremony among the Romans, 26 perpetual, consecrated by ;

Nuina as the first of all things and the soul of matter, 2U ;

preserved in all

the principal temples, 26 ; adored everywhere, 26 ; consecrated, on the altar

at Delphi, 26 ; held by the Hindus to be the essence of all f.ctive or male
power in nature, 26 ;
— the sacred, the only symbol of the Persians of their

god, 61 ;
personified by Proserjiina, 83 ; Vulcan, or Hephaistos, the general
personification, 116, 126 ; set free the soul, 117 ; ablution, or baptism, 121
the agency of dissolution of all things, and necessary for the complete dis-
solution of the body, that the spirit or vital principle (nous) might receive
complete emancipation, 117, 118, 119 ablution, or baptism, amystic repre- ;

sentation of this purification by fire after death, 121 purification by the ;

 Index. 209

fire of Baal still in use among the Hindus and Irish, 122 ;
probably this

did not signify burning alive, 122 ;

— supposed to be the medium through
which the soul passed from one state to another, 126 ; in the bodies of liv-
ing things, Krishna, 135 ;
— electric, supposed to impregnate rain, and to be
of a sulphurous nature, 135 ; torch carried by the elephant as a symbol, 136.
Fi>sl,of the goddesses, Rhea, 24 ; of the deities, Osiris, 37 cause, all existence ;
—
connected with it by a chain of gradation, 52 —
of April, phallephoric pro-
;

cession of Roman women to the temple of Astarte. or Venus Erycina, 55.

First-Begotten, Love, Eros, Cupid, or Attraction, the Mystic Bacchus, 21, 36
167; the Orphic Mysteries in commemoration, 22. See Only Son, Bac-
chus, etc.
Fis/i, upon coins, a symbol of the female sex, 66, 158 KrSnos, a figure of a ;

winged horse terminating in, 78; Ceto, the effigy of Dagon, a ship, 80 story ;

of Jonah, 80 Derceto (Atargatis, the Venus of Ascalon), represented like

;

a woman, with the lower extremities like a tail, iii the Triton (Dagon or ;

Ceto), 112 in the hair of the jegis, 130; springing from the temples of a
;

bust of Apollo Didymteus, 144 ; kept at the temple of the Syrian goddess,
172 symbol of consecration, etc., 176.
;

Flame, or gloiy, imitated by the hair of Proserpina, 83 ;

— heavenly, the soul,

or nous, a vital spark, 118 of sulphur, employed ;

— in purification, 135.

Flower, of the lotus or Nymphaa nelumbo, white, 105 ; the upper part of the
base of the Hindu lingam, 105 ; in the hand of Isis, 105 ; the basis of the
three orders of architecture, log ;
petals of the honeysuckle in the Ionic
capital, no ; symbolised the female sex. III ; — of the pomegranate, pre-
figured the male generative attribute, 112.
Flowers, crowns of, substituted for laurel and sacred plants, at entertainments
considered an act of luxury, not of devotion, 32.
Fly, an emblem of the Destroying Attribute, 8g ; Baal-Zebub, or Jupiter Fly, 89.

Fohi, a Chinese deity, 60.

Force and Wisdom, divine, represented by Neith, and Athene, or Bellona, 127.
Forehead, a third eye in that of the statue of Jupiter, 73 ; also of Thor, the
Scandinavian deity, 73 ; also of the Hindu god Siva, orMaha Deva, 73 ;

perhaps of the Cyclopes, 73.

Forgeries, numberless, 164; letter of Alexander to his mother, 164.
Fortune, 84 ; one of the Fates, 84 ; statue by Bupalus, 84.
Frenzy, enthusiastic, at the Orgies, 49 the women more susceptible, 49. ;

Frey. the deity of the Sun, and mourned by the Scandinavians, 85 fabled to ;

have been killed by a boar, and hence a boar offered to him at the Yule-

feast, 87.

Freya, the Scandinavian goddess Venus double-sexed. 32 ; the day of the week
(Friday) named from her, 146 ;a personage of the Northern Triad, 189.
Frogs around the sacred palm at Delphi, to denote the sun fed by humidity, or
the female principle, 151.
Fruit of the pomegranate, consecrated to Proserpina, 112 ; eaten by her at the
instance of Pluto, 112 ; eaten by the goddess Nana, who thus became preg-
nant, 112 ; abstained from rigidly by women celebrating the Thesmophoria,
112.
Futurity, the darkness of, penetrated by giving the celestial faculties of the
soul entire liberty, 46 ; oracles, 46 ;
judicial astrology, 51.
2 1 o Index.

O, or gatnma^ changed to C in Latin, as Geres to Ceres, 23.

Gabriel, acknowledged by the Chaldceans as a subordinate emanation, and
named from the meaning (man of God or divine man), 34 afterward ;

adopted by the Jews during their captivity, and engrafted as an angel upon
the Mosaic System, 54.
Games, Olympic, victors crowned with oleaster, or wild olive, 18 ;
grecian
victors crowned with laurel, olive, etc., 32 ; simple mimicr}' forming a
part of the very ancient games at Delos, 152 ; olive, fir, and apples, the
honorary rewards, 153, 154 ; a blessed life promised by Plato to victors,

153-
Ganesa, the of Wisdom, son of Maha Deva, always accompanied by
Hindu god
a rat, image found in an Egyptian temple, near Djirjeh, 109
92 ; his ;

represented by the figure of an elephant half-humanised, 136.

Ganymcdes, cup-bearer of Jupiter, fictitious, 86 a mighty genius who regulated ;

the overflowing of the Nile, 86 same as Atys, Adonis, and Bacchus, 86. ;

Garmr, the dog, the slayer of Tyr, or Tuisco, the devourer, 116.
Geese, sacred to Priapus, 142.
Gemeter, said by Diodorus to be the same as Demeter, 22.
Gems, figures of Amazons on, 34 of Zeus and Minerva, and an Hebrew inscrip-
;

tion from the Bible, 129 devices, 143. ;

Genaidai, the companions of Venus, 28.

Generative power or principle, see Phallus, and Active or Male Principle.
Generator, of Light, Apollo, 69 Bacchus, 79. ;

Cenetullides, the companions of Venus, 28.

Genius, Ganymedes, 86 ; the soul, the divine emanation supposed to have the
direction of each individual, and to be finally emancipated by fire, 118.
Germany, mystic lore, 3

Ghehers, or Parsees, the A vesta their ritual, 62.

Giants (earth-born), wars of, 6 ; the serpent-mother of the Scythians, so-called,
14 ; war with the gods, 72 ; Apop, or Aph-ophis, of Egypt, so-called, 72.
Scandinavian name of the earth, 37.
Gio, or lo, the
Girgik, temple near, containing images of Juggernaut, Ganesa, and Vishnu, 109.
Gladiator, the fighting, 140.
Gnosis, or knowledge, a designation of the mystical doctrines, 4.
Goat, symbol of the Active Male Principle, and generative powei, 21 fauns and ;

satyrs, 21 a sacred animal in Egypt, 21

; symbol of the god Pan, 21, 140; ;

the Grecian Aphrodite sitting on one, 29 satyrs, fauns, and paniski, caprine, ;

78,140; composite figure, 81, 82, 95 on a monument with Anubis, 11.3 ; ;

women tendering their persons at Mendes, 142 Jupiter suckled by one, ;

143on gems, 143 Isa riding one, 169.

; ;

Goats, by skipping about, indicated the site of the Oracle at Delphi, 46 ;

figures of, adorned a mystic tomb, cista, or chest at Rome, 96 female. ;

held sacred at Mendes.

Goat-skill, the ^gis, or breast-plate worn by Minerva, Jupiter, and Apollo, 130
 1;

Index. 2 1

131 ;
probably symbolical, 131 ; Roman women whipped to assure con-
ception, 143 ;
Juno Sospita, 143.
Goat-elephant, or Trag-elephas, a composite figure, 81 ; effigies among the
ornaments of the hearse of Alexander the Great, 81.
God, a supreme, suggested by general predominance of order and regularity in
the universe, 2 ; — of Nature (the Creator) unfolded in the Greater Mysteries,

4 ; supreme, of the Ophites, 16 ; self-generated mind, 22 ; the same

adored by Hindus and Christians, 40 tutelar deities and subordinate ;

spirits, his mediators, 44 the oak his symbol, 47 called by the Cretans
; ;

Lticetius and Diespiter, 70 ; the eagle the symbol, 75 ; Brahm, 177.

God of Destruction, in India, gS.
God of the Waters, Osiris, gS Bacchus, ; gS.
Goddess, Ino, a daughter of Cadmus, 11 ; the Celestial Venus, Alilat, or
Lilith, 20 ; Mother, Deva-matri, or Demeter, 22 Hertha, 23 Rhea, the ; ;

first, 24 ;
— of Love, or desire, Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite (of the Greek
pantheon), 28 Eeinos, or Binos, 28 Venus, symbolised by the planet, 30
; ;

Venus, the sexual attribute expressed by the cow, 36 of Nature, Isa, 37 ;

— ;

— Hippa, her name by paronomasia, the source of the legends and sym-
bols of horses and centaurs, 7g ; — of destruction, Proserpina, 82 ;
— of
death, Libitina, 83 84 Diana, of the Moon, gg of Force and
; Isis, 83, ; ;

Wisdom, Neith, Bellona, or Athene, 127 Scandinavian, Isa or Disa, ; —

136, 147 ; Venus-Architis, I4g ; the Syrian, her temple at Hierapolis, and
peculiar worship, 166.
Gods, their actions intermixed with those of men in the earliest traditions of
nations, 2 ; their fa^ror or anger assisted or obstructed the achievements of
renowned warriors, 2 ; Supreme, suggested by order and regularity in the
Universe, 2 ; such ineffable personage called Zeus, Dseus, or Deus, before
the dignity of that character was debased by the poets, 2 ; — Father, Priapus,
Eros, or the Mystic Bacchus, 13, 21 crowns of laurel, olive, etc., worn at ;

sacrifices and feasts in their honor, 32 guardians to mortal men, 32 ; ;

their worship declared by Krishna to be the worship of himself, 41 ;

Numa forbade the Romans to represent them under any form, 63 war ;

with giants, 72 ; of Egypt and Babylon, were carried in arks or sacred

boats, 134; sacrifices, men who perished in boxing, so regarded, 153;
names conferred on men, 153 ;
— begetting children on women, 158 ; at
Hierapolis, 167 in Hindustan, 177. ;

Gold Coast of Africa, cow revered as a sacred symbol, 36.

Golden Heifer of the Muscovites, probably a symbol of the goddess Disa, or Isa,
147-
Good ?ji6. Evil, regarded as a necessary mixture in the world, 71 ; the doctrine
of all the Mysteries, 71 ; fire the efficient principle of both, 71 ;
personified
by Osiris and Typlion, 71 represented also by Ormazd and Ahriman, Zo- ;

roaster and ZohakJ, 72 similar doctrine in India, 72 signified by the

; ;

war of the gods and giants, 72 a false notion to consider them as in- ;

herent properties, 72 distributed by Jupiter from two casks, 73.

;

Gorgon, or Medusa, a symbol of the Moon, 130 the female personification of ;

the Disk, 130 a barbarian title of Minerva, 130 regarded by Bryant as a

; ;

symbol of the divine wisdom, personified as Metis or Medusa, 130.

Gospel, the Hindus contend that it is perfectly consistent with their Shastras, 39
 2 1

2 1 Index.

Grapes, leopards accompanying Bacchus devouring clusters, go ; wolf devour

ing, 89.
Great Gods, of the Samothracian Mysteries, said to be Coelum and Terra, 24
Castor and Pollux, the same as Bacchus and Apollo, so distinguished, 96.
Great Mother, designation of Cybele, 9 ;
Deva-matr, 22 ; the omphalos or
navel-stone her symbol, 47 ; called also Nympha, 47.
Great Pyramid, 117.
Great Whole, the luminaries of heaven and the smallest reptiles that elude the
sight alike integral parts, 52 ;
general movement derived from the first

Divine Impulse, 52 ;
prediction and astrology thence deduced as an art, 52.
Grecian Women, their general state of reserve and restraint, 49 ; their extrav-
agant religious enthusiasm at the Orgies of Bacchus, 49 ; their savage
ferocity, 49.
Greeks, their primitive religion elementary, and consisted of a worship of the
Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, and Waters, or rather of the spirits presiding
over them, I ; found a Hercules in every country, 2 ; worshipped the
Supreme God, as Zeus, Dseus, or Deus, 2 their poets preserved the ;

knowledge of their sacred mythology, 3 their Mysteries, 6 Homeric, ; ;

—
estimated value by weight, 5 received the name and rites of Dionysus, or
;

Bacchus, from Melampus, 10 said to have derived the Mystic religion ;

from Orpheus, 11 did not generally know the rites of initiation and
;

worship of Bacchus until after the Trojan war, 11, 124; represented the
phallus alone, 12 ; personified it as Priapus, the Eros, or Attraction, Father
of Gods and Men, 13 ; deified heroes represented with bodies terminating
in serpents, 14 ; egg and phallus borne with a serpent in their Mystic pro-
cessions, 15 ; used a composite figure of the Mystical Serpent, 16 ; bore
the image of the bull Epaphus on their coins, 18, 36 ; represented the
Mystic Bacchus as a bull, or composite, 19 denominated the first of the ;

goddesses, Rhea, 24 employed lamps as symbols on coins, 26 called the

; ;

Universal Mother of the Phrygians Cybele or Kubele, from the cubic

form of her statues, 27 ; symbolical animals, 29 probably borrowed
;

their idea of the Amazon, or double-sexed figure from the image at Ele-
phanta, 33 ; probably the source of much of the Hindu mythology, 37 ;

never presumed to think attainable an adequate knowledge of the number

or attributes of the gods, but worshipped them all, 3S ; Diagoras and
Socrates their only martyrs to religion, except those who actively violated
or insulted the Mysteries, 40 attributed sanctity to groves, 48 their
; ;

enthusiasm generally of the gay and festive kind, 50 their temples filled ;

with dances, 50 employed wine in their sacred rites, 50 brought judicial

; ;

astrology from Babylon, but paid little attention to it, 53 maintained ;

sacred prostitutes in the temples, 55 ; personified Night as the goddess

Leto, or Latona, and Baubo, 56 never regarded speculative theories impious
;

unless they tended to reveal the Mystic doctrines or disprove the ex-
istence of a deity, 60 most ancient temples circular, 61 a square
; their ;

stone their primitive symbol of the Celestial Venus, 63 had little infor- ;

mation of the British Islands, 69 employed the eagle and lion as symbols, ;

75 represented Mars by a boar, 87 made the ass a symbol, 88 knew

; ; ;

nothing of the Phoenician Hercules in the Homeric times, 93 considered ;

Bacchus as the god of the waters, also as the patron of wine, 98 ;

consid-
 3

Index. 2 1

ered the Moon as the Mediatress between the celestial and terrestrial
world, who tempered in generation the subtility of aethereal spirit to the
grossness of earthly matter, so as to make them unite, gg, lOO ;
resorted to
human sacrifices, 102 ; received the worship of Serapis from the Ptolemies
of Alexandria, 104 became acquainted with Egypt in the reign of Psam-
;

metichus, 106 borrowed architecture from Egypt, log only knew the
; ;

Doric order in very ancient times, no; represented Juno and Mars by a
staff and spear, 114 took oaths by implements of war, 115 adopted the
; ;

Phrygian cap as a symbol of freedom, 116; burned the bodies of their

dead, 117; regarded Vulcan as the husband of Charis in the primitive
system, and of Venus in the Mystic, 126 had little trumpets at the ;

Bacchanalia, 132 wore bells at the orgies of Bacchus, with phalli, lunute,
;

etc., 133 probably found composite figures when they first settled in
;

Western Asia, which they exaggerated into monsters, 144 knew not the ;

order of days of the week, 145 , adopted the legendary tales of other
nations, I5g,
Griffin, Diana riding upon, 44 ; another kind on the helmets of Minerva, I2g.
Grove, sacred, of Dodona the oaks gave the reponses, 47 ; sanctity attributed to
groves by barbarians of the North and the Greeks, 48 ; designation of
any sacred place, though destitute of trees, 48 ; symbols of Venus-Astarte
set up all over Palestine, 4g.

H.

Halaldur, son of Odin, 122.

Hades, Afides, Aides, the ancient name of Pluto, the lord of the Underworld, 104.
Halios, chief of all the gods, the royal sun, 37.
Hand, priapic, 30.
Hare, probably the emblem of fertility, 175.

Harmonia, wife of Cadmus, changed to a serpent, 108.

Harmony of the world produced by the contention and mixture of good and
evil, 71 the succession of production and destruction, 82 represented by
; ;

the lyre supported by two goat-lions, 82 ; of the universe, like that of a

bow or harp alternately tightened and relaxed, 71.
Hawk, the Egyptian emblem of power, symbol of Osiris and Typhon, 74.
Health, serpent an accessoi-y symbol to guardian deities, 14, 175.
Heart, the symbol of Egypt, 88 ; the symbol of man morally, iig.
Heat, the male or active principle, personified also by Diana, gg.
Heaven, Apis conceived by a ray from, ig ;
personified as Ouranos, 24 ; emascu-
lated by Kronos or Time, 25 Lord of, sacrificed to by the Emperor of
;

China, 40 birds and animals acting by the immediate impulse of, 55

; ;

dreams descend to instruct men, 56 heights of disposed by Isis, 83. ;

Hetii, goddess of youth, wedded to Hercules, q3.

Hebrews, the ancient, at no time from their emigration to their captivity subject
to the kings of Egypt, 43 probably descended from the Hyk-sos race,
;

43 ; Rabbi Hillel Hanassi invented their present chronology, log.

H'ecatS, or Hekate, her Mysteries at jEgina instituted by Orpheus, 11 ; the doj»
her symbol, 113.
Heifer, golden, an idol of the Muscovites, 147
 4 ;

2 1
Index.

Helen, the divinities Castor and Pollux her brothers, g6 ; Menelaus decreed not
to die because of possessing, 125 ; same as Selene, the Moon, 157.
Heliocentric system, known by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and taught to the
savans of Greece, 60.
Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, in Egypt, the abode of the bull Mnevis, ig, 35 ;

— or Baalbek, in Syria, vibrating stones seen there, 148.

Helios, the Attic name of the sun, substituted for Eelios in the Odyssey, 126.
Hell, Milton's, taken from the Tartarus of Hesiod, 125.
Hephaistos, Phtha, or Vulcan. See Vulcan.
Herald, bears the staff or sceptre, 114.
Hercules (tutelar deity, from Sanskrit, Heri, lord or deity, and culyus, a state or
tribe), Greeks and Romans found one in every country, 2 ; Phoenician,
called also Mel-Karth, the lord of the city (Tyre), 2 ; the same as Kronos,
or Saturn, and Jupiter Sabazius, 16 ;
crowned with oleaster, 17 ; the Grecian
hero, overcame the Amazons, 34 caught the bull from Crete, 66 the lion
; ;

his symbol, 75 ; picture of, destroying a Centaur, 82, gi lion's skin, 87, ;

143 ; destroying the Hydra, g2 ; the Phoenician, the lion humanised, g2

his adventuresand the Grecian confounded, g3 the hero of the Iliad and ;

Odyssey a mere man, g3 the same as Mars and Apollo, g3

; terminated ;

his expeditions in the extremity of the West, g6, g7 ; called Soter or

Saviour, 98 ; represented with womanish features, 159 ; fables of Omphale
and lole, 159.
HerS, the Greek name of Juno, 23 ; the title also of Venus, 2g ; also of Ceres
Demeter also of Athene. See Juno.
or ;

Hermaic pillars, four-square, 63 —

statues the peculiar mode of making them
;

learned by the Athenians from the Pelasgians, 114, 149.

Hermaphrodite, the form of statues of Venus-Architis and the Paphian god-
dess, 149.
Hermes (see Thoth and Mcrcun'), styled Pompceus, as being the messsenger of
the oracle ipm-phe), 47 used the sinews of
; Typhon for harp-strings, 82 ;

nearly related to Hephaistos or Vulcan, 126 ; same as Casmilus, or Kadmi-

lus, or Kadmiel, of the Samothracian Mysteries, 150.
Herm-Herakles, 126.
Heroes furnish the first materials for history, 2; deified, 159; or /imj, same
manifestation as the Hindu avatars, 159 ; of the Iliad, 160.
Hertha, the ancient earth-goddess of the Germans, 23.
HierapoUs, the holy city, called also the Bambyke, the city where Atar-gatis, or
Venus, the Syrian goddess, had her principal temple, 74, iir, 166 ;
pecu-
liar delineations, worship, etc., 172.

Hierarchies of the North, performed human sacrifices.

Hierarchy, the great Northern, at Upsal, in Sweden, 20 the Egyptian knowl- ;

edge of the hieroglyphics supposed to have perished with, 42 permanent, ;

127 the Hindu, 180.

;

Hieroglyphics, symbolical characters used by the Egyptians, 7, 42.

Highlanders, in the army of the Pretender, swore by their weapons, 115.
High Priest, at Jewish festivals, 132 ; bells on raiment, 133 ; at the sacred
boat-festival, 134.
Hillocks, sacred, the mounds, or high places, called tombs of the deities, 96 ;

Mercury, piles of stones by the sides or intersections of roads, 148, 149.

 5;

Index. 2 1

Hindus, have voluminous poetical cosmogonies, 3 ; still employ the phallus, or

lingam as a symbol of the universal generator, 12, 142 ; celebrate the first

of May by a great phallic festival, 12; employ as a symbol the cobra de capella,
or hooded snake, i5 ; represent the naga, or serpent, with five heads, 16 ;

hold fire to be the essence of the active or male power in Nature, 26 ; use
a rosary, 31 ; reverence for the Cow, 36 ; in the Dekkan, maintained
dancing-girls, or Devadasis, in their temples, 55 ; their idol in the temple of
Juggernaut a pyramidal stone, 70 ; three-eyed god, 73 ; have a deity,
Rama, who resembles Hercules, 94 ; call the Jumna the daughter of the

Sun, 98 ; symbolise the Moon by the rabbit, 100 ; the Destroyer drawn by
a bull, 102 ; burn the bodies of their dead, 117 ; have bells on their statues,

133 ; express combinations of attributes by symbols loosely connected, 144 ;

still practice the anointing of sacred stones, 148 ;

give a child, when ten
days old, the name of one of their deities, 155 ; originated the symbols of
the Lotus and hooded snake, 109, 179 ; taught transmigration, 179 ;
peculiar
character of their art, 180, 181.
Hindu women^ carry the lingam in procession between two serpents, 15.
Hippa, signifies the parent of all, 79 the nurse of Bacchus and Soul of the
;

World, 79 ; the horse a symbol, as a pun on the word hippa, 79 ; wor-

shipped in Thessaly and Thrace with the rites of fire and chanting, 80 ;

the same as Cybele, 80 ; the name given to the principal goddesses, 113 :

the personification of femininity, 113.

Hippai, priests of Hippa, 79 the mares of Euraelus and Diomecles, 80.
;

Hippia, a title of the goddess Athene, 76, 80.

Hippios, designation of the daughter of Ceres by Neptune, 79 ; a title of the
gods Poseidon, or Neptune, Mavs, Dionysus, 80.
Hippocrates, asserted that the Sarmatian women extirpated the right breast, 33 ;

taught that castrated men were never bald, 79.

Hippon, defined by Hesychius, 79.
HipponooSy the original name of Bellerophon, 76.
Hippopotamus, or river horse, symbol of Typhon, 74.
History, earliest, actions of gods intermixed with those of men, 2 ; Phoenician
by Sanchoniathon, "pretended," 163.
Honeysuckle, an architectural ornament, no.
Hea, or Oannes, supposed to be identical with Dagon and Poseidon, 68.
Hooded Snake (see Cobra de Capelld), the mystical serpent of the Hindus,
Phoenicians, and Egyptians, 16 ; associated with the winged disk, 76
borrowed from the Hindus, 109, 172.
j%io^ of Attraction, 120, 128, 142.
Horned Bull, a temple or palace of in China, 20 ;
— revered in Japan and all

over Hindustan, 20 ; treated with equal honor in the West by the Cim-
brians and Scandinavians, etc., 20.

Hornet, the Hyk-sos, or shepherds, from Egypt, 43.

Horse, sacred to Neptune and the rivers, 76 winged, Pegasus, 76 humanised ; ;

as the Centaur, 77 a pun on the name of the goddess Hippa, 79

;
signified ;

a ship, 79, 80 ; a part of the composite symbol of the griffin, 129.

Horus, the Apollo of Egypt, 57 the son of Osiris and Isis, born while they
;

were in the womb of their mother, Rhea, 58 his statue at Coptos, 58 his ; ;

eye smitten out and swallowed by Typhon, 59 ; he and his priests wear a
 6 ;

2 1 Index.

single lock of hair on the right side of the head, 59 the bone of, 59
; the ;

mundane house of, 64 ; the origin of the Greek Charon, 134 enclosed in ;

the ark, 168.

'TAfA {hulfd), and 'TAM (hule), 138.
Human sacrifices, made to the Minotaur, 64 common among ^Ethiopian or
;

Hamitic nations, 65 ; offered to Brimo, 102 performed by the stem

;

northern hierarchies, 102 ; also by the Greeks and Romans, 102 ; whipping
the Lacedasmonian boys and the Arcadian women as substitution, 102 ;
ex-

piatory, 102 ;
by Ahaz and other Jewish kings, 122
said to be offered ;

offered by the Carthaginians and other nations, 123 Abraham and ;

Jephthah, 123.
Humidity, personified by Neptune, 78 ; lizard, the symbol, 91 ; everything moist
called the outflowing or emission of Osiris, 98 ;
personified by Diana, 99
represented the female principle, 151.
Hundred-handed, 144.
Hundred-headed, 144.
Hydra, a Hindu symbol, 75 ; Hercules destroying, 92 a reproduction of the;

many-headed Naga, 92 ; the destruction by Hercules referring to the

entering of the Sun into the zodiacal sign near the constellation of that
name, 92.
Hyes, or Hues, a name of Bacchus, 95.
Hygeia, mound at Athens, 80.
Hyk-s$s, or shepherds, the hornets of the Old Testament, 43 ; expelled from
Egypt by Josephus to have been the ancestors of the
into Syria, 43 ; said
Israelites, 43 the same view accepted by Prof. Lesley, 43
; said to have ;

been Phoenicians, Arabians, and Hellenes or Greeks, 74 perhaps the ;

progenitors of the Libyan Cyclopean shepherds, 74.

Hymn to Osiris, 37 to Demeter, 84 to -4.pollo, 159.
; ;

Hymns, Orphic, appear to have been invocations, or litanies, used in the

Mysteries, 11 their date long subsequent to the Homeric times, 12
; ;

identify Prometheus with Kronos, or Saturn, 88.

Hyperboreans, said to have founded the oracle at Delphi, 46 said by Hecatasus ;

to inhabit an island beyond Gaul, where Apollo was worshipped in a circu-

lar temple, 68
I.

lacchus, a name or variant of Bacchus, 9 Sabazius, the serpent-deity of the ;

—
Mysteries, i5 Sabazius, a variant reading of Jaho-Tzabaoth, 69 ; not the
;

Theban Bacchus, 150 ; associated, bearing a torch, with Demeter and

Proserpina, 157.
lamblichus, the Alexandrian Platonist, declared invocation in the Egyptian and
Assyrian dialects pleasing to the gods, 38 ; attempted to adapt the ancient
allegories of the Egyptians to an entirely new system, 43.
lao an emanation of Ilda-Baoth, and the spirit of a planet, 16 ; or laon, an
ancient mystic of Bacchus, 95 ; probably the origin of the
title name of the
Roman god Janus, 95 ; the god of the Jews, 132.
Ice, held by the ancient nations of the North to be the source of all organised
being, 56 the goddess Isa, 37 ; the primitive state of water, 147
; ;
per-
sonified by the goddess Isa, or Disa, 147.
 ;

Index. 217

Jdeler^ proved the years of the world and the whole present chronology of the
Jews an invention of the Rabbi Hillel Hanassi, 344 A.D., 109.
Idol, women of, dancing-girls in the Hindu temples, 55 ; in the temple of Jug-
gernaut a pyramidal stone, 70.
Idols,Hindu, holding a radiated shell, 34 worshipped by the Israelites with the
;

accompaniment of prostitution, 54.

Ilda-Baoth, or Son of Darkness, the Creator, or Demiurge, 16 creates Man and ;

Satan Ophiomorphos, 16 forbids man to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, 17

; ;

creates the material body for his prison, 17 gave the law in the ;

wilderness, 17 sends John the Baptist, and provides for the birth of
;

Jesus, 17; stirs up the Jews against Jesus, 17; Jesus placed at his right
hand, 17.
Ilithiyce, or Eilitbyas, presiding over child-birth, 100.
Illyrians said to have been cognate with the Celts and Gauls, and the Cyclo-
peans, their progenitors, 74.
Imitation, dancing an art, showing and expressing things arcane and occult, 138,

152; the old comedy proceeded from, 152; practiced in the mystic cere-
monies, 152.
Impulse, Divine, general movement of the Great Whole derived from, 52.
Incarnation, Krishna, 135.
Incubation typified by the mystic bird, 170.
/Bi/m, worship of a serpent called Dionysus, or Bacchus, 15 ; expedition of Alex-
ander, 15, 18; perpetual fires burning in the pagodas, 26; the Gymno-
sophisls, 49 ; the Devadasis, or Bayaderes, of the temples, 55 ; Bacchus
worshipped on the banks of the Ganges, 68 mythology admitted the ;

Creator and Destroyer as characters of the Divine Being, 72 the monkey ;

a sacred animal, 129 the elephant introduced into the West, 136 the god
; ;

Ganesa, 136. See Hindus.

Indian aspect of the story of the dethroning of Kronos, or Uranus, 25 ; many
of the Egyptian symbols, 37 ; lingam, or phallus, represented the male
creative principle, 66.
Infernal regions called also Hades, or Hell, the Underworld and abode of the
,

spirits or shades of the dead, presided over by Pluto and Proserpina, 103.

Infinity, we can form no distinct or positive idea of, 22.

Initiation, the induction of a candidate into the Mysteries consisted of an expla-
nation of allegories and symbols, 5 ; the gods exhibit themselves, 6 ; sacred
ceremonies kept private from the common people, 6 ; the means of acquir-
ing a knowledge of the Deity, 119.
Inmost Spirit, sustaining the Heaven, Earth and Ocean, 41.
Inspectors (seers), epoptai, ephori, the persons initiated into the Greater Mys-
teries, 5.

Intellectual, or noetic (spiritual), the God of Nature, 4.

I'lterpolation, in the Iliad, relating to Ai-iadne, Bacchus, and Theseus, 66 ; in the

Odyssey, of the abduction of Ariadne by Theseus, and her death at the

island of Dia, 66, 67 in the Iliad, reference to Ganymedes, 86
;
in the ;

Odyssey, the account of the punishments inflicted in the Underworld, 124

and Pollux, 157.
also the reference to the deification of Castor
Interpreters, of oracles, denominated Peter, and perhaps Orpheus, Pompaeus,
Ampelus and Patrick, 47 spoke with a muttering voice, 90.
;
 8

2 1 Index.

Jnvocadofis, the Orphic hymns, II ; of Bacchus, 75, 165.

!.>, fabled mother of Epaphus, or Apis, and the same as Isis, 36 name ;

of the Earth in Gothic, 37 lo, and Gio, Scandinavian name of the Earth,
;

37-
/f/^, mystic fable of her amour with Hercules, 159.
loiiians, the sanctuary and oracle of Apollo in Didymi more ancient than any
other building, 144.
Ionic, capital, no; emigration, 144.
/yanians gave the evil powers the names peculiar to the religion of their

adversaries, 62.
Irish annually extinguish their fires, and rekindle them from a sacred bonfire,
26 ; named every child from some imaginary divinity, 155.
Israelites, their ancestors, the Hyk-sos, had dominion over the Egyptians, 43 ;

supposed the prayer of Abraham to have healed the household of Abime-

lech, 46 worshipped Baal-Peor, and kept the orgies of Bacchus with the
;

accompaniment of prostitution, 49, 54.

Jsa, Isi, or Disa, the Scandinavian goddess, 15 ; signified ice, or water in its

primordial state, 37 represented by a pyramid, 70 represented with many

; ;

breasts, etc., like Diana, loi ; riding on a ram, and holding an owl, 136 ;
represented by a conical figure enveloped in a net, 146 ; unquestionably
the Isis whom the Suevi worshipped, 147 ; depicted with a child, 147 ;

represented by the golden heifer, 147.

Isa, Sanskrit, also the name of the goddess of Nature, 37.
Isiac tablet depicts the goddess holding a lotus-flower, 105.
Isis, the Egyptian goddess, under whose protection persons weie most com-
monly instructed in the Mystic faith, 9 a cow her symbol, 35 the female ; ;

and receptive principle of generation, 36 same as Venus in many respects, ;

36 called Isa in the Sanskrit, 37 two goddesses by this name worshipped

; ;

in Greece before the Pantheic Isis of later times, 37 always at the temples, ;

36 birth of her son Horus while herself unborn, 58 called also Muth
; ,

and Athyr, the Mother, the Mundane House of Horus, 64 formerly ;

the same as Venus and Libera, but afterwards generalised so as to compre-

hend all the goddesses, 83, 84 ; a counterpart of Venus, or Astarte, 84 ; has
intercourse with Osiris, she as the Moon and* he as the Sun, 99 ; her figure
represented sitting on a monkey, 129 ; worshipped by the Suevi, unques-
tionably the same as Isa, 147 ; drove away Typhon with her sistrum, 131 ;

occasionally depicted in a net, with Horus upon her lap, 147 ; enclosed in
the mystic ark, or boat, 168.
Ithyphalli, borne by the Athenians at the reception of Demetrius, as at the
celebration of the Bacchic Mysteries, 98.
hiida, or Whydah, in Africa, worship of the serpent, 15.
luno, Etruscan name, derived from Dione, 23.
Ivory, familiarly known in the time of Homer, 18 ; the modius, or polos, of Venus
made from it, 45, 67.
Ivy, chaplet^ of, 32 ; women crowned with, celebrating the clamorous nocturnal
rites of Bacchus, 68 ; called in Greek kissos, and so, by a pun on a title of

Bacchus, is adopted as his symbol, 80, 124 ;

garland on the neck of a
leopard in marble, go.
Ixioii, the fabled father of the Centaurs, by Nephele, 77.
 Index. 219

J-

Jablonski, 137.
Jacob, the patriarch of the Hebrews, funeral at Abel-Mizraim taken for the re-
ligiouscustom of " Mourning for the Only-Begotten," or Protogonus, 50;
anointed a stone with oil, according to a general mode of worship, 148.
Jaho- Tzabaoth, the name given by the Tyrians to the Sun-god in autumn, and
apparently adopted from them as the title of the Hebrew tutelar god, 69.
Janus, the two-faced god of the Romans, probably derived his name from lao,
or laon, the mystic name of Bacchus, 95.
Japanese, the consecrated founder, half-serpent, 14 ; venerate the symbol of the
Horned Bull, 20 ; represented Creation by the bull breaking the Mundane
Egg, 20 ; sacred images placed upon the lotus, 105.
Jephthah, regarded human sacrifices not unacceptable to the Deity, and included
his daughter in his vow, 123.
Jerusalem, the first Temple built with foundations of Cyclopean architecture,

74 ; Round-Tower pillars, 74 filled with innocent blood, 122

; ;
— Delivered,
an allegory, 161.
Jesus, the man, 17 ; Christ entered into him at baptism, 17 put to death, ;

invested with a body of aether, and placed at the right hand of Ilda-
Baoth, 17.
Jewish Kabalists, 16.
Jews, Michael their reputed tutelar angel, 17 ; received the law from Ilda-Baoth,
the Creator, "Son
of Darkness," 17 stirred up against Jesus, 17 religious
; ;

fanaticism sanguinary and violent, 41 their ancestors asserted by Josephus

;

to be the Hyk-sos, or Shepherds of Egypt, 43 adopted the Chaldean ;

custom of honoring the subordinate emanations or archangels, 54 did not ;

adopt the view of the generative attribute, 54 considered the true Crea- ;

tor as their national god, 54; copied Persian ideas, 62, 90; genealogies
lost and chronology unsatisfactory, 108 their year of the world and
;

chronology invented A.D. 344, by the Rabbi Hillel- Hanassi, 109 wel- ;

comed the new moon with noise, 132 worshipped lao, or Adonis, 132 ; ;

kept festivals like those of Bacchus, 132 ; the high-priest wore the spotted
fawn-skin, bells, etc., 132, 133 ; carried an Ark like the Egyptians, 134 ;

— Eclectic, and Aristobolus, allegorised the Old Testameni, 161.

like Philo
John the Baptist, an agent of Ilda-Baoth, 17 his pun on the words abenitn, or
;

stones, as becoming benim, or sons, as in the story of Deucalion, 25.

Jonah, the swallowing by a great fish probably a figurative description of his
rescue by a Phoenician or Philistine ship bearing the effigy of Dagon, or
Ceto, 80.
Josephus distinctly asserts that the ancestors of the Israelites once held dominion
over the Egyptians, 43.
Josiah, king of Judah, found kadeshim and kadeshuth at the temple of Solomon
and at high places, 54.
JudaJi, mistook his daughter-in-law for a "sacred woman," 54 ;
kings of, built

the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire, 122.
Judea, Zadok, or Zedek, the head of the sacerdotal family or caste, 53.

Judgment oj Atnenti, the source of the legend of Charon, 8.

Juggernaut, temple of, the idol a pyramidal stone, 70 ; said to lie in a dormant
 ;

2 20 Index.

state four months, 85 ; his figure, with those of Ganesa and Vishnu, at
Djirjeh, log.
Jugglers and diviners of North America wear girdles and chaplets of serpents,
14.

Julius Cmsar, aided by a "Chaldean" (Sosigines, or son of Sosiosch), to reform

the calendar, 53 losing his sword, the Gauls placed it
; in a temple, and he
declined to take it again, 114.
Jumna, or Yamuna, a sacred river of the Hindus, 98.
Juno, or Here, the same as Ceres, 23 name derived from Dione, also from the ;

Sanskrit Voni and the Hebrew Juneh, a dove, 23 ; Vesta her sister, 27 ;

the Graces her attendants, 29 probably the same as Dione, 48 Nephel^, the
; ;

"fallen woman," mother of the Centaurs, mistaken for her, 77 ; called also
Lucina, and the same as Diana, 100 ; represented by a spear, 114 ; symbols,
130 ;
— Sospita, 143 ; the Argive, 171.
Jupiter, or Zeus, the original Supreme God of the Greeks, 2 called by them ;

Dseus, or Deus, 2 ; fables concerning him believed only by the vulgar, 3 ;

called Sabazius and the Dragon of the ^ther, 16 ; crowned with olive, 17 ;

a figure like his on a Phoenician coin labelled Baal-Thurz, 20 Thor, 20 also ; ;

styled yEther, 23 Vesta his sister, 27 represents the male principle, 28

; ;

all-prophetic, 47 statues crowned with oak and fir, 48

; oracle of Amun, ;

48 worshipped by the Persians as the Spirit of the Universe, 61 distribution

; ;

of good and evil, 73 ancient statue at Argos with three eyes like Maha-
;

Deva, 73 the father of the Centaurs, 77 reposing on the back of a Cen-

; ;

taur explained, 81 ; Proserpina his daughter, 81 ; sources of the fable of

Europa, 102, 103 engraving discovered in France, 129 suckled by a goat,
; ;

130, 143 ; employed the aegis, 131 frightened the Titans with it, 131 ruled
; ;

the ^ther, 131 bore the thunderbolt, 135 the Egyptian Amun, 137 the
; ; ;

Knosian dance sacred to him, 139; the Nymphs his daughters, 141'; his
mother called Nympha, symbolising his descent, 141 ancient kings bore ;

the name, 155 Bacchus his son, by Ceres or Proserpina, 156; the son of
;

Semele, 157 ; the myth of Leda, 157 ; statue at the temple of the Syrian
goddess, 167 receiving ambrosia, 171.
;

Juul, or Yule, the Scandinavian festival, a boar offered to Frey, to conciliate

the productive power by the destruction of the adverse or inert power, 87.

K.

Kabala, the doctrine of emanation, 16 ; apparently derived from the doctrines

of the Chaldeans, or Magians, 53.
Kadeshim, and Kadeshuth, men and women set apart to prostitution at the
temples, 54 ; forbidden by the Israelitish law, 56, 350 Note, 872. ;

Kadmiel, or Kasmilus, the name of one of the gods of the Samothracian Mys-
teries, 10. See Casmilus and Cadimis,
Keeper of the boundary between life and death, Thoth, or Mercury, 116.
Key, worn as an amulet in Italy, corresponding to the cross and circle, 30.
Kissos, a name of Bacchus, probably because he was from Kisssea, or Susiana,.
80 ; the term signifying ivy, explains the using of that plant in his worship.
80. See Ivy.
 ;;

Index. 2 21

Kneph, or Num, the Egyptian deity known as the agathodsemon, 17 the re- ;

semblance of the name to that of Numa, the reputed king of Rome, 63.
Kore, the daughter, Persephone, the mother of Bacchus, or Zagreus, 49, 156 the ;

story of Ariadne another form of the myth, 65 the goddess of destruction, ;

82 ; called also Soteira, or Savior, 83 ; the same as Kura, or Demeter, 83, 156.
See Ceres and Proserpind.
Kradephoria, or carrying of palms, 132.
ICHshna, the incarnate Deity and avatar, 41, 135.
Kronos (see Saturn and Time), horrid acts, commemorated in the Mysteries, 6
the unknown Father, reverenced as Supreme and Almighty, 22 ; identified
with Time, and the allegory of devouring his own children interpreted, 24 ;

emasculates his father, 25 another hypothesis suggested, 25.

;

ICteis gunakeios, 28.

ICuieli, the Great Mother. See Cybelt
Kura, the female personification of the sun, a name of Ceres, or Demeter, at
Cnidos, 83.
JCuru, a popular title among the Aryan tribes before their separation, the prob-
able source of the name of Cyrus, or Kur, 154.

Labyrinth, a device on Grecian coins, 64 ; said to have been built by Daedalus

as a prison for the Minotaur, 64 ; artificial winding caverns common in
countries occupied by the ^Ethiopian race, and used as temples, where
human victims were sacrificed, 65 ; the Pyramids, 117.
Lake Mceris, the country below it a bog in the time of Menes, 108.
Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, called also Deva-Matraand Shri, the probable
origin of the names of Demeter and Ceres, 22.
Lamentations, in Egyptian temples, 50 ; for Osiris, Adonis, and Frey, 85.
Lamps, kept burning in the pagodas of India, 26 burning of lamps, 26. ;

Lampsacus, gold coinage, 8 Bacchus venerated by the name of Priapus, 10

;

coins, 95.
Laomedon,'kmg of Troy, had a wooden statue of Jupiter with three eyes, 73;
not the father of Ganymedes, 86.
Latona, personification of Night, 57 wife of Jupiter and mother of Apollo and
;

Diana, 57 ; the Mygal6, or shrew-mouse, her symbol, 57.

Latirel, wreaths and chaplets, 32 supposed to have a stimulating and intoxi-
;

cating quality, 46.

Leda, birth of Castor and Pollux from the egg which she produced, 157 ; the
myth another version of the Eastern legend, 157.
Leopards, devouring grapes and drinking the juice, accompanying Bacchus, 90
destroying the Bull, 90 ; drawing the chariot of Bacchus, go ; with a garland
of ivy, 90.
identified the He-
J. P., declared the Jewish legends unhistorical, and
Lesley,
brews with the Hyk-sos race, 43.
Leto, oblivion. See Latona.
Leucothol, danghter of Cadmus, and nurse of Bacchus, the son of Semel4, a sea-

goddess, II.
 ;

222 Index.

Libanus, or Lebanon, statue of Venus-Architis, or AstartS, 149.

Libations, or spondai, the designation of treaties and covenants, 45 ; drawing
blood a libation of the soul, 102.
Liber, the Latin name of Bacchus, 9, 58.

Libera, the goddess of generation, the same as Venus, Proserpina, and Libxtina,
the goddess of Death, 83 ; the Proserpina of the Romans, 157.
Libitina, goddess of Death, the same as NephthJ, Venus, and Libera, 83.
Libya, the oracle of Amun, established, 48 ;
Cyclopean tribes, 73, 74 ; deserts

afford no food or shelter for men or cattle, 107.

Lightning, borne to Jupiter by the Pegasus, 76 supposed ; affinity with sulphur,
135-
Liknites, a name of Bacchus, from the liknos, or fan-like basket, in which he
was cradled, 120.
Lilith, the Night-goddess, 20 ; the first wife of Adam, 57.
Lingam symbol carried by the Hindu women
(the sign), the phallic or generative
in procession between two serpents, 15 signifies the placing of the male ;

emblem in that of the female, 66 ; analogy to Pan, 142 ; always in the

temples of Siva, or Maha Deva, 177.
Lion, flaming, a form of Bacchus, 75 ; more commonly an emblem of Apollo or
Hercules, being the representative of the destroying attribute, 75 ; found
on the sepulchral monuments of almost all nations of Europe and Asia, 75 ;

represented killing some other symbolical animal, 76 devouring a horse ;

or a deer, 81, 82 ; in a composite figure with a goat, 82, 95 represented ;

as killing a boar, 86 ; the Chimaera, gi spouts of fountains shaped like

;

lions' heads, 97 ; the sun in the sign of Leo when the Nile overflows, 97 ;

union of the bull and lion, 112 on the handle of a vase, 136; the statue
;

of the Syrian goddess drawn by, 167.

Living stones, 148. See Baitulia, Amberics.
Lizard, the symbol of humidity, or the female principle, 91 ; — Killer, Apollo,
delivering the particles of matter from the bond of Attraction, or Love, 91
Saurians believed once to inhabit the earth, 72.
Local gods and goddesses everywhere worshipped, 38.
Locheia, a name of Diana, 100.
Ijick of hair, single, worn on the right side of the head of Horus and his
priests, 59.
Lodestone, the magnet, or siderite stone, called the bone of Osiris, or Horus,
represented the principle of attraction, 59.
Logging rocks, 147. See Baitulia, Ambrosial stones,
Loki, or Saturn, the evil potency of the Northmen, 146.
Lophoi Hemtaioi, or hillocks of Mercury, sacred piles of stones by the side of
roads, or at their intersection, to denote their consecration to Mercury, 148.
Lord of Heaven, worshipped by the Emperor of China, 40.
Lotus, or water-lily, Nymphaa nelumbo, 47 ; the mystic symbol, called polos, 01
modias, 104 ; a native of Eastern Asia, and not now found in Egypt, 105 ;

description, 105 ; power of the waters, employed

a symbol of Ihe productive
in every part of the Northern hemisphere, 105 employed in Egyptian ;

sculpture, 106 ; the three orders of architecture different modifications of

symbolical columns formed in imitation, 109-111 ; flower on Rhodian
 Index. 223

medals, 112 the Chinese goddess Pussa sitting upon this flower, 169 the
; ;

symbol borrowed from the Hindus, 179.

Louis XIV! s ambassador asks the King of the Siamese to embrace Christianity,
and is reproved, 39.
Love (see Attraction, or Eros, the First-bom, or Only-Begotten), the mystic
Bacchus, Priapus, Father of Gods and Men, 13, 21, 22, 112 how symbol- ;

ised at the temple of the Syrian goddess, 167.

Lucetius, or Luminous, a title of Jupiter, in Crete, 70.
Lucina, Juno, the same as Diana, a personification of the Moon, lOO.
Lukaios, an epithet of a deity, especially Apollo, 69.
Lukegenetes, a title of Apollo, 69.
Lukeios, See Lukaios.
Lusios, a name of Bacchus, 9.
Luson, a name of Bacchus, 9.
Lux, light, a contraction from Lukl or Lukos, 5g.
Lycomedes, daughters of the fabled associates of Achilles, a mystic tale, not in
the Iliad or Odyssey, 159.
Lyre, representation of the goddess Harmonia, 82 ; strung by Hermes, or Thoth,
with the sinews of Typhon, 82 ; device upon, 140.

M.

Maachah, queen-mother of Judah, made a mephallitzeth, or phallic manikin,

the
Egypt and Hierapolis, and those employed by the Roman
like those of
women in the worship of Venus-Erycina, 49 a priestess of the orgies of ;

Baal, 50, 54.

Macha Allah, the god of Life and Death among the Tartars, represented with
entwined serpents, human skulls, and scalps, 14 ; trampling upon the
elephant, 136.
Magians, the sacerdotal caste of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, 53 ;

Zoroaster the traditional head of the order, 53 the Kabala probably ;

originated from them, 57 said to teach that the gods will alternately con-
;

quer and be subjected for periods of 3,000 years, 117.

Magisterial seats, or Prytania, presided over by Ceres, 27.
Supreme God, 2
Magistrate, supreme (Greek, demiurgus), suggests the idea of a ;

an Egyptian, would put a fellow-subject to death for killing a cat or

monkey, 41.
Maha Deva, or Siva, probably the same as Bacchus, 49 ; an ante-Vedic deity,
represented with a third eye, 73 the Pramathas his servants, 88 ; the
;

lingam in his temples, 177.

Male power, or principle. See Active, or Male Principle.
Manslayers, or Oiorpata, a designation of the Amazons, 34.
Mars, or Ares, and Venus, 82 ; Harmonia their daughter, 150 ; symbolised by
the Ar, or Boar, that slew Adonis, or Atys, 85, 86, 88 ; considered as the
Destroyer, 87 ; represented by a staff and spear, 114 ; called also Quirinus,
or spear-god. by the Romans, who called themselves Quirites, 115 ; dog
sacred to him, 116.
Marvellous, men naturally love, 2.
2 24 Index.

Matrons, Grecian, their extravagance in celebrating the orgies of Bacchus, 49 ;

Roman, whipped with a thong of goat-skin as a remedy for barrenness, 143.

Matter contains the elements of all things, 22 Rhea, the personification, 24 ; ;

seminal particles animated by the sun, and nourished and matured by the
humidity of the moon, 99 the soul (nous) imprisoned in it, 118 the lord
; ;

of. Pan, so called by the Arcadians, and also the husband of Rhea, 136.

May, the first of, a great phallic festival among the ancient Britons and
Hindus, 12.
May-pole, a phallic symbol, 12.

Mediator, Mithras, the Persian, 123, 167 ; the mystic third figure in the temple
at Hierapolis probably the same as the mystic Bacchus, 167.
Mediatress, the moon, subject of the sun, and ruler of the earth, causes the two
to harmonise, 99, 100.
Medtcsa, or the Gorgon, the female head on the ^gis of Minerva, a symbol of
the Moon, 130 the female ; of the disk or symbol of the sun, representing
the Female Principle, 130 ; said to be the face in the moon, also a symbol
of Divine Wisdom, 130.
Meilichios, Moloch, or King, a title of Jupiter, at Sicyon, 70.
Melampus introduced into Greece the name of Dionysus, or Bacchus, his wor-
and the phallephoric procession, 10 probably got his knowledge from
ship, ;

Cadmus, 10.
Melkarth (the Lord of the City), the Hercules, or tutelar deity, of Tyre, 2 ;

temple at Tyre, with round-tower pillars, 74.

Mendes, the goat honored there with singular rites of worship, 21, 142 ; the goat
so called, 142 ; a part of the phallic worship, 142 ; female goats also sacred,
143-
Menes, the first king of Egypt, reigning some 11,000 or 12,000 years before the
Persian invasion, 108.
Mercury, Hermes, or Thoth, a tortoise placed under his feet, 34 styled Pom- ;

pasus, as the messenger of the god of the oracle, 47 strung the lyre with ;

the sinews of Typhon, expressive of harmony, by the mixture of good

and evil, 82 the dog his symbol, 113 holding a purse and the caduceus,
; ;

114 ; as Anubis, the minister of Fate, and as Thoth, the parent of arts and
sciences, 137 ; the ram his symbol, 113, 136, 150 ; hillocks of, beside roads,
or at their intersection, he being the guardian of all ways, 148 ; the Pelas-
gian, representedby a human head on an inverted pillar, etc., 149 one of ;

the Cabeirian divinities, the same as Casmilus, or Kadmilus, 150; or —

Thoth, carries a branch of palm, 151.
Merry-making, peculiar to the " country-feast," or minor rite of the Dionysia, 30.
Metempsychosis, a fundamental article of faith among all ancient nations, 179.
Mexico, captives sacrificed to the sun, 15.
Michael, name given by the Ophites to Satan Ophiomorphos, 16 ; — and other
emanations engrafted upon the Mosaic system, 54.
Mimetic, all dancing among the Greeks, 138.

Mimicry, a part of the Ionian games at Delos, 152.

Mind, Divine, the human soul an em.ination of, 45, I18 ; distempered, 46 ; nous,
our daemon, or divinity, 118 ; a god in us, nS ; said by Hippocrates to be
generated in the left ventricle of the heart, 119 ;
— the Divine, the perfec-
tion of wisdom, 127.
 ;
;

Index. 225

Minerva, a serpent in her temple at Athens, 15 fabled to have been delivered ;

by Vulcan from the head of Jupiter, 127 the same as Neith of the Egyp- ;

tians, Bellona, and AthenS, 127 regarded as both male and female, 128
;

the owl her symbol, 128 ;

putting a bridle into the mouth of Pegasus, 128 ;

represented in later periods by a woman armed with shield, helmet, breast-

plate, and spear, 129 ; her helmet decorated with symbols like the owl,
serpent, ram, griffin, sphinx, or flying horse, 129 ; the yEgis, or breast-plate,
a goat-skin symbol, 130 ; the Gorgon, or Medusa, a symbol of the moon,
130; sometimes bore the thunderbolt, 135 represented, like Ganesa, with ;

the elephant's skinupon her head, also with an elephant drawing her
chariot, 136 ; the ram, 136.
Minotaur, the Bull-symbol partly humanised, 64 ; the same as Atys, the Phrygian
god, 64 ; the Labyrinth a cave-temple where human sacrifices were offered,

65 the astronomical sign of the sun in Taurus, 65

; ; evidently also the
symbol of the Male Principle, 66.
Mises, a title of Bacchus, denoting the double sex, 90.
Mistletoe, a symbol of the Divine Operative Spirit, 47.
Mithraic superseded the Mysteries of Bacchus, and became the foundation
rites

of the Gnostic system, 53 the baptism, or purification, by blood, the Tauro-

;

holium, ^gobolium, and Criobolium, 123.

Mithraism, or Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of the Persians, 53.
Mithras, the sun, the Persian mediator, 123, 167.
Mnevis, the mystic father of Apis, represented by a bull at Heliopolis, in
Egypt, 18, 19, 20.
Modius, polos, or hemisphere, placed on the head of Venus, 45 ;
— of Fortune,
84 ;
—
of Pluto, 104 the seed-vessel of the lotus, 104.
;

Moisasoor, 181.
Moist Principle, the source of all things from the beginning, loi. See Hu-
midity, The Female Principle, et passim.
Moloch, the Fire-god, Hercules, Melkarth, or tutelar deity, 2, 92 children ;

passing through the fire to, in the Valley of Gehenna, or Tophet, 122.
Money, the first Macedonian princes of Egypt and
portraits upon, those of
Syria, 7 ; first and not by weight, and consisted of spikes,
circulated by tale,
or obelisks, 8 the obolos or spike, and drachma or handful, the usual
;

coins, 8 first coinage probably by the Lydians, 8.

;

Monkey, death the penalty in Egypt for killing, 41 ; a sacred animal in Egypt
and in some parts of Tartary and India, 129.
Moon, the spirit presiding over it an object of ancient worship, i sustained by ;

the Inmost Spirit, 41 worshipped by the ancient Persians, 6c

; the goddess ;

Diana her symbol, 81, 99 nourishes and matures the seminal particles of
;

terrestrial matter, 99 her orbit placed between the sun and the earth so
;

that she, as mediatress, primary subject of the one, and sovereign of the
other, causes them to harmonise and unite, 99, 100 builders refuse to cut ;

timber at the full, 100 represented by the Egyptians under the symbol of
;

a cat 100 Europa and Astarte the same personage and deity, 103 } the
;

Medusa, or Gorgon, on the .i^gis of Minerva, a symbol, 130 said to have ;

the face of the Gorgon, 130 —

new, welcomed by the Jews with noises, 131
;

her personification borne by the Egyptians in boats, 133 Arcadia said to ;

be formed before the moon, and the Arcadians to be older, meaning.

 ;;

2 26 Index.

doubtless, before the moon, or female principle, was worshipped, 137)

Helen, 157.
Mother-Goddess, or " Mother of the Gods," same as the Magna Mater, or " Great
Mother," Rhea, 24 worshipped by the Amazons, 34 the omphalos, or
; ;

navel-stone, at Delphi, her symbol, 46, 47 Leda, the mother of the Dioscuri,
;

157. See CybeU, Rhea, Celestial Venus, Ceres,

Mother of the World, a title of Diana, gg.
Mother, the Great, orgies 9 ; Mylitta, her Assyrian appellation, 20 ; the
of,

designation applied to Ceres, 22 ; represented by the cubical block, whence

her name, Kubele, supposed to have originated, 27,
Mounds, or high places. So.
Mountain, every one had its local deity, I the favorite place of worship of the ;

ancient Persians, 61 also sought for the same purpose by the Greeks, 62.
;

"Mourning for the Only-Begotten" or the First-Born, the designation given in

the Bible to the lamentations at the several Mysteries, 50, 130.
Mouse, a Priapic animal, 92.
Mouse-killer, or Smintheus, a title of Apollo, g2.
Mundane House of Horus, a designation of Isis as his mother, 64.
Musaus, the Orphic bard, 11.
Music accompanied devotion among the Greeks, 50.
Mygale, Mus
Araneus, or the shrew-mouse, the symbol of Latona, 57.
Mylitta, the Assyrian designation of the Mother-Goddess, 20 the name of the ;

bee, melitta, a pun, 20 ; the same as the Venus of the Greeks, 34 ; Babylo-
nian women prostituted at her temple, 54, 67, 77 ; her worship adopted by
the Persians, 61.
Myrtle, a symbol both of Venus and of Neptune, 31.
Mysteries, a secret or mystic system existing in the more civilised countries of
Greece, Asia, and Egypt, preserved generally by an hereditary priesthood
in temples of long-established sanctity, 3of Eleusis, the more celebrated ;

and known, 3 two degrees in the Eleusinia, the first degree preparatory,
;

and the second, or " Greater," completing the rites, 4 difference in the ;

several countries more in form than in substance, 4 the secret doctrines ;

called gnosis, or knowledge and wisdom, including all science of a higher

character, 4 ; called also Apocrypha, or hidden things, 4 ; the disclosures,
or apocalypse, 4 ; neophytes, mystie, and epoptai, or seers, 4 ; their end
and purpose the knowledge of the First, the Lord, and the noetic, or
spiritual, science, 4 ; Nero dared not ask initiation, because of the murder
of his mother, 5 ; the divulging of the doctrines punished as impiety, 5, 40
peril of .iEschylus, 5 ; difficulty to obtain accurate information, 5 ; doctrines
conveyed under allegories and symbols, 5 ; the last, or epoptic, stage of
initiation consisted of explanations, 5 ; the mythological story, 6 ; the Orphic
made the legend of Charon a part of the rites, 8 ; the protecting deities, 9 ; the
Bacchic said to have been brought from the Egyptians by Orpheus, also the
initiation of Hekate, II ; no mention of them in the Iliad or Odyssey, 11
the Eleusinian said to have been introduced 175 years before the Trojan
War, II ; credited to Eumolpus, 11, 34 the Orphic Hymns, II ; the mani- ;

kins or images of Osiris, 12 the Egg also carried in procession at the orgies
;

of Bacchus, 13 ; —
Christian, serpent in, 16 ; dedicated to Eros Protogonos,
or mystic Bacchus, 22 also to the female, or passive power, represented
;
 ;;

Index. 227

at Eleusis by Ceres, 22 Samothracian, the Great Gods, 24

; violating ;

or insulting, punished with death, 40 based on the hypothesis that there

;

is a faculty in the soul capable of elevation to seership, 46 ; the Bacchic,

held at night, 49 ; Mithraic superseded the Bacchic, 53 ; the contention of

good and evil, thus producing the harmony of the vi^orld, taught, 71 ; the
philosophical, or psychological, system of the ancients explained, 118;
dancing always a part of the rites, 139; all Egyptian priests first initiated
into the rites of Pan, 142 ;
— of the Cabeiri, celebrated at Samothrace, 150
the Cabeirian substantially like the Eleusinian and Sabazian, 150 mimiciy ;

and imitations a part of the ceremonies, 152 ; the games connected with
the worship, 153.
Mystic egg, or mundane egg, the Egg of Night, 13 ; Eros, Love, Attraction,
Bacchus, or Priapus, said to have sprung from 13 ; the symbol of the it,

Universe, 13; incubated by the World-Serpent, 14; produced Castor and

Pollux, the Great Gods, 96, 157.
Mystic symbols taken from the signs of the zodiac, or, more probably, the signs
of the zodiac from mystic symbols, 97.
Mystic system, faith, or doctrines, preserved in the more civilised countries, 3 ;
the basis of the ancient worship, 4 ; called gnosis and wisdom, and included
all science of a higher character, or esoteric, 4 ; difficult to obtain accurate
information, 5 ; taught under allegories and symbols, 5 ; study of coins a
principal means of obtaining a competent knowledge, 9 ; the deities under
whose protection persons were most commonly instructed, g introduced ;

into Greece by Orpheus, 11 not referred to in the Iliad or Odyssey, 11

;

of immemorial antiquity in Egypt and all over Asia, 12 ; engrafted on the

old elemental worship, 21 Kronos, or Zeus, and the mystic Bacchus, or
;

first-begotten Love, only one Being, 22 ;

placed the sun in the middle of
the universe, with the planets moving around, 59 ; Aristarchus, of Samos,
censured by Cleanthes for impiety for teaching this, 60 ; the crime of
Socrates and Diagoras probably of the same nature, 60 ; not known to the

Greeks when the Odyssey was written, 124.

Mystic winnow, or basket, of Bacchus, 120.
Mythology, tht theology of ancient and pagan nations affords all the most inter-
esting and important subjects of ancient art,l ; of Pindar more consistent—
than that of any other poet, 124 popular, confounded the hero in Thebes
;

with the ancient god Bacchus, 156 turned into history, 162.
;

N.

Naga, the cobra de capella. See Hooded snaie.

Names, Zeus, Dseus, and Deus, given by the primitive Greeks to the Supreme
God, 2 of gods conferred on children, 154, 156 giving those of gods and
; ;

heroes to newly-discovered lands a source of fable, 160.

Nana, goddess, mother of Atys, became pregnant from eating a pomegranate, 1 12.
Nature, the personified universe, as the female principle, represented by Isa, 37
personified by Isis, 83 ; Venus, 126.
Nazir, or dedicated person, Samuel, the prophet, 56.
Neith, the Egyptian Minerva, 127; name resembles Analtis, 127.
 2 28 Index.

Nelumho. See Lotus.

Nephell, rendered by Hislop, a fallen woman, who had observed the rites of
Mylitta, 77 ; fabled mother of the Centaurs, 77.
NephtM, or Nephthus, the Egyptian Goddess of Death, and yet the same as
Venus and Libera, 83.
Neptune, or, more properly, Poseidon, the god of building, fortification, and the
waters, 48 ; sent the bull into Crete, the reputed father of the Minotaur,
64, 66 ; an Hamitic divinity, worshipped in Libya,
not an actual sea-god, 64 ;

Africa, and Crete, the same Dagon, and Cannes, or Ana-melech, 64,
as
65, 63 ; father of the Cyclopean Shepherds, 65, 74 belonged to the old ;

elementary worship, 68 ; not an elemental deity, but the building-god,

standing in close relation to the giants, 68 ; supreme ruler in the " Outer
Sphere," where Zeus practically disappears, 68 ;chief god of the Phoinikes,
or Phoenicians, 68 same as Hea, of Babylon, 68 the horse sacred to him,
; ;

76 ; his daughter by Ceres, 79 called Hippios, 80 the horses Pegasus and

; ;

Arei6n his sons, 80.

Nero dared not compel the priests to initiate him into the Eleusinia, 5.
Net, the figures of Disa, or Isa, Isis, and Apollo, enveloped in, 146, 147.
Night, the egg of, 13 Eros, Bacchus, sprung from, 13 Lilith, 20
; personified ; ; —
as Leto, or Latona, and Baubo, 57 represented with a vail, 57 seeing ; ;

the sun at midnight, 96.

Nocturnal Sun, Bacchus, 94 ; seen in the Mysteries at midnight, 96.
Noise, of bells, the ^gis, sistrum, cymbals, a charm and means of consecration,
131 ; the trolls and fairies driven away, 133.
Noos, or phren, the higher or divine soul, the pneuma, or spirit of the New
Testament, 120. See Soul.
North America, jugglers and diviners make girdles and chaplets of serpents, 14 ;

pyramid a symbol, 70.

North of Europe, Thor represented with the head of a bull, 20 sanctity imputed ;

to groves, 48 the general system, 53 Bacchus and .'Vpollo worshipped, 68 ;

; ;

obelisks of stone sacred to the sun, 69 ; hierarchies performed human sacri-

fices, 102 ;
paid divine honors to the spear, 114 ; the duel and the ordeal
regarded as appealing to the Deity, 115 ; Skalds, 118 ; barbarians, their
belief in future life, 125 trolls and fairies driven away, 123
; representation ;

of Isa, 136 ; days of the week consecrated to gods, 146 hillocks on the ;

roads, 148.
Norway and Sweden, divine honors paid to serpents, 14 ; oath by the shoulder
of the horse, 80.
Numa, fabled King of Rome, said to have consecrated the Perpetual Fire, 26 ;
forbade to represent the gods under any form, 63 ; resemblance of his name
to Num, or Kneph, the agathodsemon of Egypt, something more than an
accident, 63.
Nymph, nymphe, has always a female idea, 47 ; designation of a young woman,
141 supposed by Bryant to be derived from ain, an eye or fountain, and
;

omphe, an oracle, 141 relates, doubtless, to the female principle, 141.

;

Nympha, a name of the Mother-goddess, 47 ; the namfe of the mother of Jupiter

141.
Nymphea nelumho, the lotus, or water-lily, 104. See Lotus.
Nyinphaum, an oracle-temple, 141.
 ;

Index. 229

Nymphs, a race of females, descended from Jupiter, or Oceanus, 99, 141.

Nyssian dance, sacred to Bacchus, 139.

O.

Oak regarded at Uodona, and by the Celtic nations, as a symbol of the Supreme
God, 47 ;kinship of Druidism signified with the ancient Pelagic worship, 48.
Obelisk, first coins in that form, 8 stars represented by them ranged in a circle,
;

found in Northern Europe, 69 ; most frequently employed by the

Egyptians, 71 ; spiral, to symbolise the thunderbolt, 136 symbol of deifi-
;

cation, 173.
Ocean, sustained by the Inmost Spirit, 41 ; fabled origin of the nymphs, 99 ;

— Erythraean, the Egyptian symbols, especially the Nelumbo and Hooded

Snake, copied beyond, log.
Oceanus, father of Philyra, mother of Cheiron, 7S ; father of the nymphs and
river-gods, 141.
Ochus, persecutions in Egypt, 44.
Odin, the All-Father, hall of, 125 one of the Scandinavian triad of deities,
; 169.
Oleaster, or wild olive, victors crowned with at the Olympian games, 18.
Olen, a priest and prophet of Apollo, built the Oracle at Delphi, 46.
Olive consecrated to Minerva, 17 ; statues and victors crowned with it, 17, 32.
Olympian Jupiter, three-eyed, 73.
Olympic Games, the victors crowned, 18 ; the honorary rewards. 157, 159.
Omadios, or Omestes, the devourer of raw flesh, a title of Bacchus, 102.
Omphe, or amphi, an oracle, 46.
Omphalos, the navel, designation of the oracle-stone at Delphi, 46.
One-eyed, priests of Horus, 59.
Only- Begotten, Protogonos, the mystic Bacchus, etc., 22 ; mourning for, 50, 150.

Ophites, or Serpent-worshippers, a sect of Gnostics, 12 ; constructed a doctrine

of Emanations, 16 ; their theory of creation, etc., 16 ; secret signs of recog-
nition, 17 ; the Cyclopeans, 74.
Ops, consort of Saturn, the analogue of Isis, Astarte, and Rhea, 24 ; the name
a supposed contraction of of his, a serpent, 74.
Oracle, temple at Dodona, 28, 48 of Zoroaster, 38 ;
— ; how produced, 45, 46
— at Delphi, built by Olen and the Hyperboreans, 46 ; anciently called
om-phe, or amphi, 46 ; Pompasus, 47 ; interpreter called Peter, 47 ; influ-

ence in public counsels, 50 ; those best favored who paid best, 51 ;

— Del-
phic, commanded women to be scourged at Alea, 102 ; Nymphjeum, 141 ;

hanging-stones consulted, 148.

Ordeal, or trial by fire and water, regarded as an appeal to the Deity, 115.
Orders of architecture suggested by the lotus, 105-107.
Orgies, or Mysteries, of Dionysus, egg consecrated, 13 in Judah presided ;
—
over by Queen Maachah, 49 the Cabeirian and others substantially alike,
;

150. See Mysteries.

Oriental sages, 43.
Origin of evil, Typhon, or the Hittite god Seth, 71, 72 ; the Great Serpent, or
Saurian, Apop, or Aph-ophis, 72.
Orpheans, ascetics and devotees, like the Gymnosophists of India. 49.
230 Index.

Orpheus credited with introducing the Mysteries into Greece, 11 his personal ;

existence denied by Aristotle, 11 name perhaps signifies an interpreter of

;

the oracles, 47.

Orphic Mysteries included the legend of Charon and his boat, 8 ;
— faith, the
mystic system, 9 ;
— Hymns, invocations or litanies, used in the Mysteries
II ;
— Mystagogy, all theology the out-birth, II ;
— language, 13 ;
—
Hymn, placed the sun in the centre of the universe, 59
38 ;
Hymns ;
—
celebrate Hippa, 79 ; —
Hymns identify Prometheus with Kronos, or
Saturn, 88 ; — Hymns call Pan the mover of all things, 138.
Orthia, or Orthosia, a title of Brimo, or Diana, at Sparta, 102.
god of the Mystic religion in Egypt, 6, 9 the same as Bacchus, or
Osiris, the ;

Dionysus, of the Mysteries, 9 phallic manikins employed in his rites, 12

; ;

the bull Apis his terrestrial representation, 19 hymns to, 37 bone of the ; ;

lodestone, 59 ; the potency of good, 71 ; the hawk his symbol, 74 loves ;

and misfortunes, 84 ; dead or absent forty days in each year, 85 ; dismem-

berment by Typhon, 88 ; outflowing of the Nile so termed, 98 ; his potency
in the Moon, gg.
Ouranos, or Uranus, the vault of heaven personified. See Heaven.
Owl, the symbol of Minerva, 128 ; decoration of her helmet, 129.
Oysters in sympathy with the Moon, or female principle, 28.

P.

Pagan, from pagus, a village, or rural canton, a term applied to the votaries of
the ancient religion, after its outlawry by the Roman Senate,
Palestine, Egyptian conquest doubted, 43 ; religious prostitution, 54.
Pallas. See Athena and Minerva.
Palm, symbol, 1 5 1.
Pan represented under the form of a goat, 21 ; fir-trees and caverns consecrated
to him, 48 ; character like Saturn, 78 ; the most ancient deity of the Arca-
dians, and perhaps the same as Amun of the Egyptians, 137 ; called also
Zeus, 138 the husband of Rhea, and therefore the same
; as Kronos,
or Saturn, 138; director of the mystic dances, 139; not known to the
earliest poets, 140; confounded with Priapus, 141; represented by the-
sacred goat of Mendes, 142 ; all priests in Egypt initiated into his Mys-
teries, 142.

Panchaa, pretended island, 162, 177.

Paniski, or Paniskoi, 78 ; subordinate ministers of Pan, 140.
Pantheic figures, of Diana, 81 ; of the Deity, 143 ; of Cybele, 145 ;
— temples,
166.
Paphinn Venus, bearded, or double-sexed, 2g, 32, 104, I4g ; mother of the Cen-
taurs, 77.
Paradesa, 28.
Paris, his statues taken from those of Atys, 86.
Parsley used to crown Roman victors, 153.
Pasiphah, wife of Minos, and mother of the Minotaur, 64.
Passive Principle of Nature. See Female Principle.
Pedum, a pastoral crook, or hook, 142.
 1

Index. 23

Pegasus, the winged horse, 76 ; Minerva putting a bridle in his mouth, 128.
Penance, the whipping of the Arcadian women, 102.
Peor, the Moabitish god, equivalent to Bacchus and Priapus, 49, 141.
Perikionios, or surrounded with columns, as in a temple-circle, a title of
Bacchus, III.
Perpetual Jire, consecrated by Numa, 26.
Persecution not incurred anciently because of religious opinions, 40.
Persephonl, or Persephoneia. See Proserpina.
Perseus, a fictitious personage, 157 ; floating in a box or ark, 168.
Persia, mystic lore of ancient priests, 3 ; kings never put their portraits on
coins, 7.
Persians, employed no statues, but worshipped fire, 61 ; adopted the rites of

Astarte, 62.
Personification, a means of multiplying divinities, 25.
Petasus, a cap placed on statues of divinities, 116.
Peter, ham peteh, to open or reveal, the interpreter of an oracle, 47.
Phahhon, 169.
Phalhis, symbol and procession introduced into Greece, lo ; an image, or manni-
kin, carried by Egyptian women, 12 the triple symbol, 12 ; ; May-pole
festival, 12 ; symbol of the sexual attribute, 12, 142 personified ;
as Priapus,

13 boine with figs, 29

; a mepkallitzeih, or mannikin, made by Queen
;

Maachah, 49; double, 98; symbolised by the pomegvanate-flower, 112;

images of Pan, 141 two enormous pillars in the temple of Hierapolis,
;

172.
Pharisees, Pharsi, or Asideans, Persian religionists in Judea, 53, 90.
Phil(C, 36, 106, 109.
Philyra, daughter of Oceanus, fabled mother of the Centaur Cheiron, 78.
Phcenix, 86.
Phren, the mind, or principle of thought and perception, 120.
Phtha, Hephaistos, or Vulcan, the primitive element, and father of the Cabeiri,
or chief gods of Egypt, 127.
Phidtalmios, an epithet of Neptune, or Poseidon, 144.
Picus, the sacred woodpecker, 172.
Pillars of Sesostris, 93 ; architectural, 109.
Pine-cone on the thyrsus, or mace, of Bacchus, 112, 113.
Pipe, symbol of harmony, 142.
Place of the gods, a phrase applied to Isis and the Syrian goddess, doubtless
referring to the womb of the Great Mother, 64.
Planets worshipped, i ; depicted upon the crescent of Cybele, 145.
Pluto not worshipped in the primitive religion, 103 adopted in the Mystic ;

worship, 104 the same as Hades, 104 how he procured the stay of Pro-
; ;

serpina in the Under- World, 112.

/'/aOT«j, a designation of Jupiter, 87.
Poetry, Greek, produced by the ecstatic raptures of devotion, 50.
Poets debased the dignity of the Supreme Being, 3.
Pollux. See Castor and Pollux also Diosctiri. ,

Polos, the round cap, or hemisphere, on the head, called also modius, 84 ; worn
by Pluto and other divinities, 104 the seed-vessel of the lotus, 104.
;

Polu-parthenos, 176.
 ;
;

232 Index.

Polypus, 45.
Polytheism, the result of the doctrine of Emanations, 38 ; had a lax and com
prehensive creed, 60 ; not believed in by the intelligent among the an-
cients, 92.
Pomegranate, fruit sacred to Proserpina, 112 ; its arcane meaning, 112 ; inter-
dicted in the Thesmophoria, 112 ; Nana becoming pregnant with Atys, 112 ;

the name rhoia a pun for Rhea, 112 ; held by Juno, 171.
Pompasus, Mercury, the messenger of the oracle, 47.
Pompeius, the interpreter of oracles, 47.
Poplar, chaplet worn by Hercules, 95, 97.
Poppy, sacred to Ceres and Venus, 45.
more
Poseidon, the correct name of the Building-god, the divinity of the Libyan
and ^thiopic nations, but better known a3 Neptune, 64. See Neptune.
Pothos, 169.
Priapus, originally a name of Bacchus, 10 ; personification of the phallus, 13
the same as Eros, Attraction, and the mystic Bacchus, 13 statues made of ;

fig- wood, 29; "black-cloaked," 57; name derived from Briapuos, or

clamorous, also from Peor and Apis, 132 geese sacred to him, 142 simi- ; ;

larity to the Pan of Egypt, 142.

Priesthood, hereditary, 3, 108 ; initiated into the rites of Pan, 142.
Primitive religion of the Greeks, elementary, i ; Pluto not worshipped, 103.
Probation required of initiates before the final disclosures, or epopteia,^.
Prometheus, a title of the sun, and his binding, a symbol of winter, 88 ; more
probably an Ethiopian god, worshipped by the Colchians, and having in
his temple the device of an eagle over a heart, an Egyptian crest and
symbol, 88 ; same as Kronos, or Maha-Deva, 88.
Prophetic po7ver supposed to be attended by ravings and mania, 45 supposed ;

to be produced by intoxicating exhalations from the earth, 46 ; female sex

more receptive, 49 ; abstinence essential, 175.
Proserpina, Kore, or Persephone, Queen of the Under- World, mother of the
mystic Bacchus, 49, 156, 157 Goddess of Destruction, called also the Pre-
;

server, 82, 87 same as Ceres and Isis, 83 same as Diana, 103 personifi-
; ; ;

cation of the passive or female principle, 103 ; she eats the pomegranate, 112.
Prostitution a religious rite in Babylon and other countries, 54, 67.
Prytania, Greek council-houses, 26, 27.
Psuchi, or Psych/, the soul, or power of animal motion and sensation, 120
typified by the butterfly, 123.

Purification, first characteristic of initiation into the Mysteries, 4 ; by water and

fire, 121, 122 ; by the blood of a bull, goat, or ram, 123.
Purple, a sacred color, applied to the statues of deities and the bodies of Roman
consuls and dictators, 120.
Purse, symbol of the productive attribute, 114.
Pnssa, or Chinese Venus, comprehending the triple godhead, 169.
Putrefaction, a symbol, 8g.
PyraHhca, the Persian fire-temples, 61.
Pyramid, a religious symbol, 70; employed most by Egyptians, 71, 118.
Pythagoras taught the heliocentric, or solar, system as a Mystery, or arcanum,
sg.
Pythian ptiestess declared all religious rites acceptable to the Deity, 40 ; ecstasy
 Index. 233
and enthusiasm, 45 ; favored those most who paid best, 51 ; always a virgin,
175-
Pythios, a title of Apollo, 91.
Python, battle against Apollo, a symbol, 6, 21 ; name of Apollo, 47.

R.

Rabbit, a Hindu symbol of the Moon-goddess, 100.

Radiation, or diadem of obelisks, a symbol of deification, 6g, 173.
Ram, a symbol of Mercury, 113, 136 ; blood shed for mystic purification, 123 ;

depicted on the helmet of Minerva, 129 ; symbol explained in the Eleu-

sinian Mysteries, 150 ; Isa riding on one, i6g.
Rama, the Hindu hero, an avatar of Vishnu, 94.
Raphael, a subordinate emanation, engrafted by the Jews upon the Mosaic
system, 54. See apocryphal book of Tobit.
Ray from heaven. Apis miraculously conceived, 19.
Rea, 24.
Red or purple, a sacred color, 120.
Regeneration of the soul after death, a pagan dogma, 121.
Renovation a part of the system of the universe, alternating with dissolution, 116.
Res, 24.
Rewards in the Under-World, 124.
Rhaabon, a chief of inferior spirits in the Hindu system, 181.
Rhadama7ithus (from the Egyptian Ro-t-amenti, the judge of Amenti, a name of
Osiris), the associate of Kronos, and judge in the Under-World, 124.
Rhea, first of the goddesses, 24 ; mother of Osiris and Isis,58 also of Typhon,
;

71 ; the pomegranate-symbol, rhoia, suggested as a pun upon her name,

112 ; Pan her husband, 138 ; the same as the Syrian goddess, 166.
Rivers had guardian deities, i, 65 ; the horse sacred to, 76.
Romans, found a Hercules in every country, 2 worshipped the hooded snake, ;

16 ceremony of marriage, 26 made no alterations in the religious insti-

; ;

tutions of conquered countries, 40 women worshipped Astarte, or Venus- ;

Erycina, 55 derived their religion and language from the Etruscans, 51

; ;

forbidden by Numa to worship images, 63 r represented Juno and Mars by

a staff or spear, 114 ; women scourged with thongs of goat-skin, 143.
Rudder, 84.
Runic monuments, 30.
Rustam, a Persian hero, 94.

S.

Sabazius, the Serpent-deity, 16 ; a title of Bacchus, 69.

Sacred language employed in the Mysteries, 13, 38 ; — animals, 18 — symbols,
;

18, et passim.
Samothracian Mysteries, \!cie. Great Gods, 24 a "sacred language" employed,
;

38 ; the Cabeiri worshipped, 127 the Pelasgian Mercury, called also Cas-
;

milus, or Cadmilus, explained, 150; received from the Pelasgi, 151. —

Sanchoniathon said to have compiled a Phoenician history, 163.
 ;;
;

234 Index.

Saturn, "horrid acts," 6; devouring his own children, 24; cutting off the
genitals of his father, 25 ; said to be identical with Chronos, or Time, 25
appeared under the form of a horse to Philyra, 78 ; the same as the Arca-

dian Pan, 138.

Satyrs, ministers of Bacchus, forms of the goat-symbol, 21, 140; probably the
same as Centaurs, 78 ; equine and caprine, 78, 143.
Saurians once believed by the Egyptians to have principally occupied the
earth, 72.
Sanroktonos, or Lizard-killer, a title of Apollo, gi.
Scandinavians, mystic lore and cosmogony, 3 ; phallus employed, 12 ; revered
Thor under the symbol of a bull, 20 ; used the cross, 30 ; worshipped Freya,
32 ; fabled that the sun in winter sucked the cow Adumbla, 36 ; mourned
for Frey, 85 ; ideas of the future life, 125 ; worshipped Odin as the Supreme
God, 155.
Scarabaus, or black beetle of Egypt, 128.
Scarus, a fish sacred to the Syrian goddess, 176.
Scylla, a combination of emblems, 134.
Seasmis personified, 73.
Secret system. See Mysteries, Orgies, and Eleusinia.
Sects, the worshippers of Vishnu and Siva, in Hindustan, very hostile to each
other, 177.
Selloi (same as Galli), the priests of the oracle at Dodona, 47, 48.
Semiramis, 220,
Serapis, agod of the later Egyptians, 24 the cross, \, found in his temple, 30
;

probably a general personification, 104.

Serpent (see Hooded snake and Water-snake), represented the Principle of Life,
14 ; Mundane Egg, 14, 147 the general symbol of immor-
coiled round the ;

tality, employed by the Greeks, Scythians, Parthians, Japanese, Tartars,

14 ;

Scandinavians, jugglers of North America, Africans, ancient and modem

Hindus, Phcenicians and Carthaginians, Egyptians, Druids, and inhabitants
of the Friendly Islands, 14-16 the hooded snake the favorite symbol, 16
; ;

the five-headed serpent of the Hindus, 16 probable reason of its adoption, ;

17 ; — worshippers in early Christian sects, 17 ; flying, 35 ; — Python, 91 ; the

Hydra, 92 ; the caduceus, 114 ; the aegis and Medusa's head, 130; trans-
formation of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia, 150 water-snakes in the ;

sacristy at Delphi, 151.

Sesostris, stories of his empire and conquests fictitious, 43 ; reported to have
erected pillars in the countries of Asia which he conquered, 93 ; conjectured
to have been the same as Ra-Meses, and to have reigned at Thebes, 107.

Sexual rA!:%, 114.

Shell, or Concha Veneris, a female symbol, 28 ; radiated, 34.
Siamese shun disputes, and believe that God delights in a variety of forms and
ceremonies, 39.
Sibyls always virgins, 175.
Silenus, 78.
Silvanus, 78 ; Sylvanus, 138.
Sistrum, of Isis, loi ; Typhon vanquished by its noise, 131.
Siva, the third in the Hindu Trimurti, called also Maha-Deva, or the Chief
God, represented with three eyes, 73 the destroyer and generator, 177 ;

enmity between his votaries and those of Vishnu, 177.

 ;

Index. 235
.sky an object of worship, i.

Smin-theus, a title of Apollo, supposed to mean Mouse-killer, 92.

Snake. See Serpent, Hooded snake, and Water-snake.
Socrates, when dying, commanded the sacrifice of the cock, as if about to be
4 his reputed offense of atheism probably but the revealing of
initiated, ;

arcane and occult knowledge, 40, 60 cultivated dancing, 139. ;

Solar system, a mystic doctrine of the Orphic system, taught by Pythagoras, the
open teaching of which was declared by Cleanthes to be an impiety, 59.
See Sun.
Solomon, Cyclopean architecture and round pillars in his temple, 74 ; employed
the palm and other profane symbols, 152.
Soteira, Savior, or Preserver, a title of Proserpina, the ruler of the world of the
dead, 83.
SilTHP K02M0r, soter kosmou, savior of the world, a Priapic figure, 2S.
See Worship of Priapus, by R. Payne Knight.
Soul, an emanation of the Divine Mind, and of a prophetic nature, 45, ir8 the ;

principle of reason and perception personified into the familiar djiemon,

118 imprisoned in matter, 118 supposed to reside in the blood, 119 two
; ; ;

souls, the nous or phren, and the psuc/i/, or power of animal motion and
sensation, 120 ;
purified by fire, 120, 121 ; symbolised by the psyche, or
butterfly, 123 ; fate of the umbra, or terrestrial soul, 124.
Soul of Matter, Fire, 26 of the world, the goddess Hippa,
; 79.
Sparrow, symbol of the female principle, 29.
Spear, 95, no
symbol of the destructive power, emblem of Juno and Mars, 114 ;

Sphinx, wife of Cadmus, 34 a composite symbol, 129, 134, 167.

;

Spintria, tickets issued by the Emperor Tiberius for admission to his private
entertainments, 56.
Spires and pinnacles of churches, emblems of the sun, 70.
Spirit, vital, represented by the Serpent, 14 the mystic Bacchus, or ; love, its
emanation, 36 fabled to dwell in the sun, 37 ; the First Cause, 38, 53 all
; ;

things participate in its essence, 41 ; signified by the mistletoe, 48 ; wor-

shipped by the Persians, 5l ; symbolised by Jupiter reposing on the back
of a Centaur, 8l ; — upon the waters, 112 — invoked by Agamemnon, 165.;

Spondai, or libations, 45.

Square area, or stone, a symbol of the female productive power, 63.
Staff, or sceptre, 31 caduceus of Mercury, 114.
;

Statues, of the bull, 20 ; of the gods, the Greeks long without, 62.
Stonehenge, the circular temple of Apollo, in England, 68.
Stones, square, 63.
Stones, amberics, ambrosial stones, logging-rocks, pendre-stones, pillars, stones
of God, baitulia, 147 ; cairns, 148.
Sulphur, called also theion, or divine substance, supposed to have an affinity
with the divine nature, 135.
Sun, anciently worshipped, i reputed by the Scandinavians to suck the white
;

cow Adumbla, 30 Osiris concealed in his embraces, 37 formed by the

; ;

Divine Spirit, 38 ; signified by Apollo, 57 ; said by Pythagoras and others

to be placed in the centre of the universe, 59 ; Bacchus Sabazius, 69 wor- ;

shipped as Jupiter and Apollo, and by human sacrifices in Mexico, 70;

spires, pinnacles, and weather-cocks on churches, 70 ; sethereal fire, 71
236 Index.

Frey, the Sun-god, 87 Prometheus a name of the sun, 88 Apollo the

; ;

diurnal,and Bacchus the nocturnal, 94 supposed to impregnate the air, ;

99; called also Baal, 122 his children by Minerva, 175.

;

Sunnaos, or bedfellow, 171.

Supreme Being, idea suggested by supreme magistrate, or demiurgos, 2 ; taught
in the Mysteries, 4 ; reverenced as Kronos, or Zeus, 22 self-generated, 22 ;
}
the idea of having parents, 25 all things his emanations, 41.
;

Stipretne councils, held in the Prytania, or fire-temples of Greek cities, 26.

Supreme magistrate, or demiurgos, suggested the idea of a Supreme God, 2.
Swans, 190.
Swine (see Boar), the flesh abhorred by the Egyptians and Jews, also in Pontus
and other countries, 27.
Sword, an oath taken upon it inviolable, 115.
Symbols, secret doctrines conveyed, 5 sacred, as the means of conveying divine
;

truth, 6 on coins, 7 of immemorial antiquity in Asia and Egypt, 12 et

; ; ;

passim.
Syrian Goddess, Atar-gatis, or Derceto, Astarte, Mylitta, Rhea, Cybele, Isis, the
Celestial Venus, or Mother-goddess, round-tower pillars in her temple at
Hierapolis, 74; her image, III, 166; served by galli, or castrated priests,
174 •, the fish sacred to her, 176.

Taautos, Tat, or Thoth, or perhaps Seth, 24.

Taras, son of Poseidon, and reputed founder of Tarentum, 176.
Tartars, princes carry the dragon for their militaiy standard, 14 ; worship
Macha Allah, 14, 136 ;
place the picture of the lion on tombs, sacred
edifices, and utensils, 75 ; regard the monkey as sacred, I2g.
Tartarus, the fabled place of punishment after death, 125.
Taurobolium, the sacrifice of the bull for purification, 123.

Tauropola, a title of Diana, 102.

Teletai, or perfectings, the common Greek designation of the Mysteries, 4.
Temenos, or temple-circle, mentioned by Hecatseus, probably Stonehenge, 68.
Temples, of the sun, in Mexico, 15, 70 ; Grecian, image of the bull, 18 ; of Vesta,
oracular, 46, 47
circular, 27 ; ;
—
primitive, were circles of rude stones, 61,

68 of Juggernaut, 70 at Thebes, 106 symbolical of the female power,

; ; ;

III at Delphi, 151 pantheic, that of the Syrian goddess most known, 166.
;
;

Terra, rrj epa, 24 one of the Great Gods in the Samothracian Mysteries, 24.
;

Terrestrial soul, the umbra, at p sue hi, 124.

Thamyris, a very ancient part of Thrace, mentioned by Homer, 11.
Thebes, Boeotian, or Cadmasan, 10 signifies a cow, 35 Bacchus said to have
; ;

been bom there, 35.

Thebes, Egyptian, temples and ruins scattered ten miles on both sides of the
Nile, 106; Sesostris, 107; records of the priests for between 11,000 and
12,000 years, 108.
Themis (Coptic, Thmei), the guardian of assemblies of men and gods, 27.
Theocrasy, a method of curtailing the number of deities, 150.
Theodosius demolished the temples, 30.
Theogony exhibits the first system of religion in every nation, 2 ; of Hesiod, 73.
 Index. 237

Theseus (Theos-Zeus), a symbolical personage, 66, 67 when supposed to have ;

started into existence, 157, 158 a probable personification of Hercules, 158.

;

Thesmophoria, the Mysteries of Ceres, observed only by women, fabled to have

come from Egypt, 165.
Thigh, sacrificed as the most honorable part, being regarded as the seat of the
generative attribute, 32.
Third figure, at Hierapolis, 167 ; the dove, 170.
Thor, signifying a bull, the Scandinavian god, equivalent to Jupiter, 20 ; repre-
sented sometimes with three eyes, 73 the eagle pictured on his head, 75
; ;

one of the Scandinavian triad, and mediator, i6g.

Thoth, parent of the arts and sciences, 127. See Mercury.
Thradan, the origin of mystic religion in Greece, 11 ; rites of Bacchus, 6S.
Three bodies of Diana, loi ;
— statues at Samothrace, and figures at Upsal, 169 ;

lines or legs from a central disk, 169.

Thunder and lightning carried by the horse Pegasus to Jupiter, 76.
Thunderbolt, Krishna, 135 ; represented by two obelisks, 135.
Thurz, Baal (the lord bull), a pun on Baal-Tzur, or Baal of Tyre, 20.
Thyrsus, the staff of Bacchus, always surmounted by a pine-cone, 113 ; said by
Plutarch to have been carried by the Jews at festivals, 132.
Time, See Saturn.
Titans, wars of, 6;name, perhaps, from the Hebrew tan, a dragon or Saurian,.
72 ; dismembered Bacchus, 88, 156.
Titles applied to children derived from attributes of the Deity, 155 ; those of
founders of families so applied, 158.
Tombs, coins placed there as sacred symbols, 8 ; beads found in them, 31 ,

covered with pictures of the lion, 75 ;

— mystic, cistae, or chests, 96 ;

symbols, J 20.
Torch, held erect to signify life, and reversed to denote death, 26 ; carried by
the elephant, 136.
Torch-bearer, Dionysus, 94.
Tortoise, a symbol of Venus, 29, 35, 113.
Tragelaphus, a goat-elephant, 81.
Tragodiai, or tragedies, goat-songs, 21.
Trajan^s column, 106.
Transmigration of souls, into their different bodies, or perhaps conditions, 124 ;

a doctrine common to Hindus and other nations, 179.

Trees, v/orship of oaks, 47 ; firs devoted to Pan, 48 ; Bacchus the patron,
144-
Triads, Egyptian, 38 ; the Supreme, represented at Hierapolis, 168 ; — at
Samothrace, Upsal, among the Chinese, and on the Pacific islands, 169 ; the
Hindu Trimurti, 177, 179 ; the idea universal, 178.
Triangle, Egyptian symbol of the Triad, 169.
Triform division, the first departure from simple theism, and the foundation of
religious mythology, 178.
Trimurti, the three Hindu deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, 177,
Trinacria, 169.
Trinity in unity in almost every nation, 178.
Tripod, 170.
Triton, a composite representation terminating in a fish, 112.
 ;

238 hidex.

Triumph, painting the statues red, also the bodies of the consuls and dictators, 120.
Tunny, \li>.
Turrets, Cybele crowned with them, 27 also the Syrian goddess, 167.;

Tuscan order, m.
Tutelar deity Hercules, of Tyre,
, 2 ; Cybele, of cities, 27.

Tiao principles, active and passive, or male and female, 25, et passim.
Tyndarus swearing the suitors of Helen, 80 ; Castor and Pollux said to have
been his sons, 157.
Typhon, the evil potency of the Egyptians, brother of Osiris, and the same as
Seth, or Satan, the Hyk-sos and Hittite god, 6, 71 ; said to have been emas-
culated (or dethroned) by Horus, whose eye he struck out, 58 ; the destroy-
ing power, 71 ; represented by the hippopotamus, 74 the harp strung with ;

his sinews, 82 ; represented by an ass, 87 ; dismemberment of Osiris, 88,

157 t
Typhonian rock, fable of Prometheus, 88.

U.

Umbra, or shade, the terrestrial soul, 124.

Universal -powtT, 84; — conflagration, 117.
Upsal, seat of the Northern hierarchy, 20, 136 ; three statues, l6g.
Uranus, Ouranos, or Heaven, 24.
Uriel, or Uraeus, 16 ; an emanation adopted by the Jews as an archangel, 54.
Urns, sepulchral, emblazoned with a reversed torch, 26.
Urotalt, the Arabian name of the Supreme Being, 19.
Urus, auroch, or European buffalo, 19.

V.

Vail, the Night-goddess depicted with one, 57 ; upon the head of Proserpina, 83.
Vailed cone, or egg, 95.
Vailing, muesis, or initiation, 4.
Vase employed as a symbol of the vine, 45.
Vaticination, the art derived from the dsemon, or guardian spirit, 119.
Vemis, or Aphrodite (for the Great Mother of the Asiatics, see Celestial Venus),
the Graces her ministers, 29 the planet symbolised by the y, or cross of
;

Serapis, 30 ;
symbolised by a cow, 36
represented holding a poppy-head, :

45; Vulcan her husband, 126; detected in an amour with Mars, 126;
dancing, 139 Harmonia her daughter, 150 statue at Samothrace, 169.
; ;

Vesta, daughter of Rhea, and first of the goddesses, symbolised by fire, 27.
Victims, human, in Mexico, 70 ; — to the Minotaur, 64, 65 ; offered to Brimo,
102 ; sacrificed by the hierarchies of Northern Europe,
by the Greeks also
and Romans, 102; children so offered, 123; Abraham and Jephthah, 123;
perished in boxing and gladiatorial matches, 153.
Victors in the games crowned with olive or oleaster, 1 8, 32.
Victory, personified, 84, 123, 134.
Vine, a favorite symbol of Bacchus, 45, 90 ;
personified as Ampelus, 91
Hercules destroying it, 93.
 Index. 239

Virgin, mother of the Scythians, half-serpent, 14 ; Diana of Ephesus not of this

character, 67 ; Minerva, also mother of the Corybantes, Diana, also " the
Mother," 175, 176.
Virgins, the Sibyls and German prophetesses, 175.
Virginity the attribute of Diana, but hardly correctly so, loi ; an attribute of
various goddesses, 175 Juno renewed every year, 176.
; that of
Vishnu, slew a serpent, 72 —
or Juggernaut, lay dormant four months, 85
;
;

images at Girjeh, or Djirjih, with Ganesa and Juggernaut, log the steers- ;

man of the sacred ark, 134 the Preserver, the second person in the Hindu
;

Triniurti, 177.
Votaries of Bacchus, inspired, 45.
Vulcan, the personification of fire, n6, 126, 127 ; husband of Charis, 89 ; his-
band of Venus, 126 ; father of the Cabeiri, 127 ; made the fegis, 131.
Vulgar, or the populace, the great preservers of ancient customs, 48.
Vulttire of Prometheus probably a symbol of the Winter and Destroying
Power, 88.

W.

Wagon, a name of the constellation Great Bear, 97.

Watch-night, the Nyktelia, a night-festival of the Mysteries, 34.
Water, typifies the passive, or female, principle, 25, et passim; symbolical ol
Bacchus, as well as Neptune, 67 ; Osiris, god of, 98 poured by Pan upon
;

the phallus, ijlswans the emblem, 142.

;

Water-snake, worshipped in the Friendly Islands, 15; or Hydra, compre- —

hended both symbols, the serpent and the lizard, 92 at Delphi, 151. ;

Waves, imitated by the raised curves at the extremities of roofs. 111 on ;

Phoenician coins, 128.

Weather-cocks, on churches, originally emblems of the Sun-god, 70.
Week, days of, called by names of the planets, 145.
Wheel, a symbol of the universe, carried in mystic processions, 60.
Whipped, a Jew, for neglect or violation of the ritual, 41 Lacedaemonian boys, ;

at Sparta, and Arcadian women, at Alea, 102 Roman matrons, to promote ;

fecundity, 143.
Wine always accompanied devotion among the Greeks, 50.
Wings, upon Eros, or Cupid, emblems of spontaneous motion, 13 ; on Mercury,
116 ;
— on the thunderbolt, 135 ; of Cybele, 145.
Winnow, mystic, of Bacchus, 120, 128.
Winter, the boar an emblem, 85 ;
—
solstice, the period of Yule, 87 ; the
binding of Prometheus a symbol, 88.
Wisdom, the secret doctrine of the Mysteries, 4.
Wolfi'P&nnx), an emblem of the destroying power, 89, 178.
Women, Hindu, carried the lingam in procession. 15 ;
— Italian, wear Priapic
amulets, 30 — Sarmatian, said
; todestroy the right breast, 33 Cyrenean, ;
—
would not eat the of the
flesh cow, 36 ; —
Barcsean, abstained also from
the flesh of swine, 36 — ; only, officiated at the oracle, 46, 48 ; the term
nymph relates to them, sexually, 47 ;
— Grecian, their enthusiasm, and
even ferocity, when celebrating the orgies of Bacchus, 49 ; prostituted
240 Index.

themselves in ihe temples of Mylitta, Astarte, the Celestial Venus, Nana

Aaiatis, Venus-Erycina, and in Rome and India, 54, 55, 67 ;
— British, cele-

brated the nocturnal rites of Bacchus, 68 ;

their constitutions affected by the

moon, 99 ;
—
Arcadian, whipped annually at the festival of Bacchus, 102 ;
—
Roman, whipped with thongs of goat-skin to promote fecundity, 143 ;
—
Athenian, invocation at the Thesmophoria, 165 enthusiastic, at the ;
—
temple of the Syrian goddess, 173 ;
more liable than men to spiritual

enthusiasm, 175.
Woodpecker, the yunx, or wry-neck, sacred to iVIars, 171, 172.
Worship, mystic and symbolical, in Asia, of immemorial antiquity, 12 ; princi-

ples of, 50, ei passim.

Wreaths of foliage, 32.
Writing, alphabetic and hieroglyphic, 6, 42 ;
symbolical, 70.

Y.

Yamuna, or Jumna, 98.

by the barbarians
Year, represented of :'iie North, 145.
Yule, the feast of Frey, kept at the winter solstice, 87.
Yunx torquilla, or the wry-neck, 171.

Zadok, the head of the sacerdotal family in Judea, 53.

Zebiib {Baal), the oracle-god ofEkron, made by the Jewish Pharisees identical
with the Hittite god Seth, or Satan, and styled Prince of Devils, 62, 89;
— or Jupiter-Fly, the destroying attribute, 89 ; name conjectured to mean
Baal of the Temple, or Lord of the Oracle, 90.
Zend Avesta. See Avesta.
Z^tis. the Grecian name for the Supreme Being, Dseus, or Deus, 2 ; the same as
Kronos, 22 ;
the all-pervading spirit of the universe, 6r ; called also
Meilichios, or Moloch, 70; correspondent with Amun, 137; the name
given to Pan, or the great All, 138 ; horned, 138 ; invoked at the Thesmo-
phoria as the all-ruling Spirit, 165 ; statue at the temple of the Syrian
goddess, 167. See Jupiter.
Zodiac, use in astrology, 52 ; the signs taken from myslic symbols, 97.
Zoroaster, Zerdusht, Zerathustra, the sacred college of Chaldseans, or Magians,
or the president (Rab-lMag) of the college, 53 the Avesta claimed by ;

Persians of the second, or post-Parthian, dynasty to be the work of

Zoroaster, 62.
 Hands with Necromancer's Emblems.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Drawn from the Antique by A. L. RAWSON.
THE FIGURES REFER TO FOLIOS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGES.

See the same names in the Index.

Refers to the numbered paragraphs m the text.

No. Page.
I. Gnostic Gem. —Metropolitan Museum I
Abra.xas god from King's Gems, semes (shemesh) ILAM-IAO, Jeho-
vah the great sun (god). " lao is Adonis, Adonis is the Semitic and
Mosaic Adonai, the Lord" (Movers). lao is the highest of all the
gods; he gives life to all, and in lieaven is the SuN. In the winter,
when the nights are longest, he dwells in the Under World as (Aides)
Zeus Chthoxios, in Hades ; in spring when the harvest is ripe he is
Zeus, the god of the weather ; in summer he is the scorching Helios ;

and inautumn the season of fruits he is lAO tlte source of all beauty,
love, and life." Phoenician in origin but adopted in many other lands.

2. Frontlspiece, Soorya. —
From the original
The original is a carving in marble nearly six feet high, by Hindu art-

some remote age of anticjuity, perhaps before the great gods were
ists in

given more than one pair of arms. Soorya is the spirit residing in the
sun which causes all things to grow, as the lotus emblem held in each

hand indicates.The sign of the female principle is made by both

hands, as the priest now makes it, by elevating the thumb and two lin-
gers, and it is also the sign of the Holy Trinity. The smaller figure of
a priest at the left shows a phallik sign with the right hand and holds
a cup (the sign of the female) in the left. A female warrior with
sword and shield stands on the right. Before the feet of the god Arun
the charioteer seated on an elephant's head, guides the seven horses of
42 2 List of Illustrations.
No. Page.
the sun, the seven day.s of a quarter of a moon. The small figures on
the sides are for the winds, waters, fruits and flowers. At the top a
monster's head — the sun as a boar ; the destroyer. The statue was

found in 1833 on Saugur island at the mouth of tlie flanges, India, by

Mr. P. G. Sinclair, an East India Company's pilot, and sold by him to

Mr. J.
W. Rulon, of Philadelphia, where it now is, in possession of his

son, by whose leave this drawing was made.

3. Gods .vxd Goddesses Before Persephone — Moiitfaucflii 5

4. YouNi; Bakchos c>n a Tiger. — Boiir. Mus 9

The young god holds in his hand the sacred Kanthar, the two-handled
drinking cup. Rawlinson, Herod, ii, 74, says :
" It is connected with
deep drinking, as being raised with both hands and emptied at a

draught, a fashion in which Marius is said to have copied the god." A

vine with clusters and leaves hangs on the tiger's neck, and a Thyrsos
lies under his feet. The god is crowned with ivy. He may as well 1)6

called Dionysos as Bakchos, unless the comic masks indicate " the in-

ventor of comedy," another title of Bakchos. The group represents

both the creative and the destructive powers in nature combined. See
Richard Payne Knight's Worship of Priapus,\s. 74, also Cabinet Seerel.

pp. 20, 32, 45, S9, 112, 113.

5. Seili",nos. — Bourbon Museum 10

The god and moisture, and so of " thirsty souls." A
of humidity
dweller in fertilizing streams. The word means a bubbling fountain.
" He gives drink of delicious sweetness." His son Evanthes gave
( Jdysseus wine which Polyphemos said was sweeter than honey. He
is also a god of Wisdom, for Platon said Sokrates learned of him. The
p(jets made him son of Aphrodite, or of the Naiad Chione and of Pion-
}sos, or of Adonis, or Pan, whiclr was to say he was a union of water
and sun or wind. A very different idea of this god is given by R.
Payne Knight IVorship of
(
J'l-iapus, pp. 41, 42).

6. Seilenos. —
Bourhou Museum 10
The names of the ancient artists who designed these two pictures of the
god of generous drink are lost, but their work remains for our admira-
tionand delight. They are well worth stn<h- for the several attributes
cif Seilenos, and the beatity of their grouping and execution.

7. Xymphs and Water Gods. — Mou/faueiiu 11

8. Three Graces. — Bourlwii Museum 14

A Hindu personification of the bright ravs of the sun, or of the tlashing
rays, as young women with wings. Neail)" all the famous artists ot

ancient and modern times have made groups of the f iraces ; sometimes
as three, then four, or more, led I'V -Apollo or Merem}'. The names ol

the three are Thaleia (the blooming one), Aglaia (the shining), and
Euphrosyne (joy), sometimes called Pasiphae (all brilliant). See Note
157-
 —

List of Illustratious. 42 3
No. P.M. I.,

9. Perseus and Persephone. — Causeiis 15

10. Venus on a Shell. — Bout-. Mus 29

Found at Gragnano, Italy, painted on a stuccoed wall in a garden.
The shell is an emblem of the feminine principle, as also the leaf in her

hand, and the tunny fish. See Cabinet Seen/, p. 69.

1 1. Apollon and Python. — Mus. Francaise 30

Also may be named Herakles and Hydra, Kadmos and Serpent, Em-
blem of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil.

Apollon was the Purifier (sunlight on fog in marshes). The original of

the picture is called Cadmus and the Dragon, although the lion's skin
of Herakles and dart of iVpoUon are there.

12. A.MAZONS AND GREEKS. Roman Campana 31

The Amazons were mysterious beings, slaughtered or overcome by
Achilleus, Herakles, Theseus, and Bellerophon, and said to have been
beautiful, fierce, and powerful, as might be said of the clouds in sun-

shine. Another view of the Amazons was that they were female war-
riors whose right breast had been amputated to free the arm in using
the bow, spear, or sword, and an attempt was made to trace the word
to a supposed root " mazos," meaning a female breast. Some authors
locate them on the island Hesperia, west, near the Atlantic Ocean.
The gardens of the Hesperides are in an island which no bark ever
approaches, where the ambrosial streams perpetually flow by the Couch
of Zeus, and it is near the land of the Gorgons, and of that everlasting
darkness which is the abode of Ahi and Pani, of Geryon, Kakus, and
Echidna.

13. The Herakles of the Farnese Palace. —Rome 33

Herakles, like Theseus, is both god and hero. As a hero he is son of
Jupiter and Alkmene and others say of Amphitryon. Juno was jeal-
;

ous and sent two serpents to destroy the infant. This means that the
rising (infant) sun strangles (disperses) the dark morning clouds, called
serpents (offspring of the great night-dragon or serpent). Herakles in
this figure is the sun at noon, at his greatest strength, irresistible as a

giant with a club.

14. The Nymph Deianeira and Kentaur Nessos. — Guido .

3S
The Nymph was intrusted by Herakles to the Kentaur Nessos to be
carried over a river, and he made love to her on the way across,
against her wish, and was shot by the sun-god. The dying Nessus re-
quested the Nymph to give his shirt, which was red with his blood, to
Herakles. When the god put the shirt on he was on fire with torment
and died in the flames on Mount Oita. The sun sets in a bank of fiery
clouds, crimson, scarlet, gold and purple. See other references to
Herakles. Deianeira is the Hindu Dasyanari, the wife of the fiend,
the enemy of the day.
424 List of Illustrations.
No. Page.

15. Theseus, Eurytos anh Ariadne. — Gat. dcs Peints .... 38

Eurytos was father of lole (loved by Herakle.s), teacher of the use of
the bow to Herakles. Eurytos and Kteatos were sons of the grinders
MoHon and Aktor (the clouds were formed by the winds).

Coins. — Britisti Museum and Am. Num. Soc 42

16. Sun as a man and a lion. Hadrian.

17. •' Rev. Moon as a woman in a crescent ; star and sea-crab.

1 8. Athena with helmet and earrings.

19. " Rev. Owl and olive sprig; A(th)E (for Athens) in a
simk square.

20. Boar's Head.

21. SvRAKOsioN (Syracuse). Arethusa, earring, hair in a net

and band, curls like flames, surrounded by dolphins (tun-
nies).
It is conjectured that the meeting of the two fishes opposite her nose is

to hx the date of the coin between the reign of Gelon, 485-478 B. C

and that of Kimon, later, when the island on which the city was built

was connected with the main land by a causeway.

22. '• Rev. Chariot and four horses driven by ApoUon who
is crowned by Victory.
This is a union of the horse, emblem of humidity, chariot, of the fe-

male principle, and of the sun as the male. Trophy in the space be-
low.

23. Herakles in the garden of the Hesperides.

24. V.ASE ; two-handled kanthar ; two dots.

25. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor, Cesar.

26. " Rev. Perseus cutting off the head of Medousa; Pallas
assisting (the sunlight cuts off the cloud or disperses it).

Sebaste (Samaria).

27. Thasos. Satyr carrying off a nymph (wind blowing a

cloud away).

28. Akanthos. Lion killing a horse (sun drying up fog).

29. Eo\PT. Hadrian head; (money of) Imperial Caesar

'J'rajan Hadrian the Venerable.
 —

List of lllii.strations. 42 s

Nn- I'ACJE

30. " Rev. Serapis on a ram ; 6th year.

31. Bakchos (Bacchus) or Dionysos. Rom. Mus 46

Homer makes Zeus say Dionysos is his son by Semele (the earth), (See
.Vote 812), which is to say, of the hc.'.ven and of the earth. The two
names in later time Greek poetry came to denote very different ideals.
Dionysos was the son born out of darkness, the worker through the
long day of life, contender with and conqueror of enemies (clouds),
sleeper in the dark, silent land (night), and he who rises again from
sleep in the dawn-land. He is also the night-sun as Apollon is the
day-sun. The nature of divinities is read in their names, and Brown, in
" The Great Dioiiysiak Hfyt/i," gives forty-three epithets of this god,
each descriptive of some attribute. A few of these are : Agrionios, the
savage, referring to an early time when human sacrifice was offered to
the god ; Bromios, the noisy, as patron of the noisy and vociferous rit-

ual ; Choiropsalas, the sow-seeker, a phallic epithet (see Clement Alex-

andrinus, Protrept. ii. 39, and Aristophanes, Sphejies, 1364, and Peter,
ii, 22). The word Bakchos is said to mean to howl or shout wildly.
Associated with this god are many emblems ; the serpent as a symbol
of the sun, of time and eternity, of earth-life, fertilizing moisture, and as
a phallic emblem; sesame (always put in the mystic chest), made into
cake pyramids and knobbed cakes ; also salt, ivy, pomegranate, ser-

pents and ferules. Dionysos was also said to be the son of Persephone,
, of 16, of Arge, of Dione, and of Amaltheia. See Myth, of the Aryan
Nations, Sir G. W. Co.\. The name Dionysos is referred to the Assy-
rian Daiannisi, or Dian-nisi, judge of men, and it corresponds to the
Egyptian Rhotamenti, Rhadamanthys, the King of the Under World.
The Dionysiak myth is a treatise on life, as conceived by the various
peoplewho invented it. Dionysos is the kosmic spirit of the material
world, son of Zeus the first cause and all-father, and of Semele the
foundation of nature (Brown). Orpheus says :

" The sun whom men call Dionysos as a surname.

One Zeus, one Aides, one Helios, one Dionysos."

32. Birth of Bakchos. — Gal. des Feints 50

Bakchos is the sun, and was said to be a son of Dionysos and Aphro-
dite, that is the Dawn in its loveliness and splendor, unruffled by cloud
or wind. Apollo with his foiu- horses ushers in the da)', and Pan pipes
a welcome, while Hermes bears the infant aloft to Zeus who waits on
a cloud attended by his eagle. A'arious nymphs, gods and goddesses
are near, and Narcissus (Narkissos) the weary sun, goes to sleep (turns
into a flower).

2,:>,. Persian Banner ; emblem of the Sun 54

34. The Mystic Egg ; see Note 60.

The Solar Egg is a manifestation of the Kosmic Egg, supported by two
serpents of plenty, each crowned with the modius of Serapis. On some
 ——

42 6 List of Illustrations.
No. Page,
ancient Roman tombs we see a human head with two serpents as
wings; on others a head with wings; the cherub. In this group of the
egg with serpent wings we ha\e the sun as the agathodaimon rising
" with healing on his wings," which are the horses of Indra, the golden
pinions of Protogonos, as " on wings of glory up the east he soars,"
I I}'perion the climber. This is the w'inged solar circle of Kaldea,
Assur, Egypt, and Persia, where it originated. It means the brooding
and generative power of nature.

35. The A'irgin Mary and child Jesus, in a circle of roses

and flames, an emblem of maternity. See Notes 576, 577.

36. The Venus of Cyprus. — Met. Museum.

The hermaphrodite, with male and female emblems.

37. The Arda — Nari — Iswara. —Moor' s Pantlicon.

With both male and female emblems. The tiger, bull, spotted leopard
garment, and a stream of vitalizing fluid issuing from the male side of
the head, the origin of the spiritual river Ganges, the stream of all liv-

ing souls.

38. The Bull Apis of Egypt.— 7?. Payne Knight, IV. of P.

39. Persian emblem. — Causeus.

40. Herakles (Sandon) killing a boar. Met. Mas.

Sun drying the fog. From " King's Gems."

41. Tyre.
Colony of Tyre the metropolis —the two sacred stones, double altar, in-
cense altar flaming, and shell under an oak from which hang two
acorns.

42. Emble.m of the Dog Star Sirius. — Causeus.

43. The god Atys, Adonis, Tammuz. Alontfaue-on.

44. Kerberos. — Causeus.

See Engraving No. 211 for another form.

Coins. — Am. Numismatical Society 62

45. Alexander II. king of Epirus ; head in elephant's skin.

46 " i?('(-'. A hena armed

I
; eagle. See Note 92.

47 Bull. Bakchos on a coin of Cyziciis.

48 Dkmetrios II Nikator, Philadelphos.

49 " Re'o. Cerks with phallic emblems.

50 Hekakles killing a bull. Herakleia.

 List of Illustrations. 427
No, I'AI,E.

51. Bull butting; fish below. Tliurium.

52. Priest sacriiicing on flaming altar ; cock and serpent.

53. Athexa.

54. " Rev. Owl on a vase; goddess of plenty near; olive

branch. Athens.

55. Syrakosion. Arethousa in a circle of dolphins.

56. Archelaus. Horse.

57. Alexander II. king of Epirus.

58. " Rev. Zeus holding eagle and staff; eagle at his feet.

59. Lion with wings. Leontopolis.

60. Dejietrios II.

61. " Rev. Shrine of Kyeele ; goddess on a goat's back.

62. Herakleia. Head of god in an olive wreath. Hair of

flames.

63. Zeus. Jupiter. —Marble at Rome 65

Zeus lived in the clear blue sky, and some poets said he is the blue
cether, unruffled by wind or storm, and is accompanied by the immortal
gods on Olympos. He never takes part in affairs of mankind, but del-

egates others to do his will. This is Zeus Ouranion. " The thought of
Zeus as the One God and Father of All was the birth of religion."
The Zeus Pater of Greeks, Dyaus Pitar of Hindus became Jupiter at
Rome. The birth and amorous exploits of Jupiter are the subjects of
many lines in the Iliad and Odyssey, in Hesiodic and Orphic theogon-
ies, and in Ovid's Metamorphoses. See other engravings of Zeus be-
low, and \ 4.

64. Ceres Demeter. —Florence Museum 69

.Max Miiller sees in the Hindu Dyava Matar, female
name Demeter the
as Dyatis Pitar is male as such they made her the Dawn-Mother.
;

Others say she is Ge-Meter, earth-mother. In the myth of Proseq^ine

(Persephone) she is called Mother Earth.

65. Rhea Kyeele. —Florence Museum 73

This goddess is the Latin ideal ripener of fruits. iSIax JMiiller says the

Avord is from a Sanskrit root Sri meaning to cook or ripen. Sri

(Lakshmi) is the wile of Vishnu, and she rose from the sea like Venus.
See Notes I44, 148, also engraving XXXIV in Cabinet Secret.
42 8 List of Illustrations.
Nil. Pagr.

66. Venus de Medicis — Flor. Miis 79

Anli(|ue marble found at Rome and set up in the garden of the Medicis
in 15S0; carried to Florence in 1680, and to Paris by Napoleon I., and
restored to Florence in 1 815.

Coins. — Am. Num. Soc 86

67. Cyrene. Head of king with ram's horn of Ammon, and

two plants.

68. " Rev. The sacred Silpion, and Atrato.

69. Perinthos. Alexander Severus, emperor.

" Ri'v. Zeus seated, eagle, Gaia and Thalassa below;
above Helios with horses to his car, and Selene with bulls.

Star and crescent above. Inscription ; all in Zodiac, and

border of dots. See* 219.

70. Thasos. Head of Bakchos crowned with ivy.

71. " Rev. Herakles as an archer, disk, and Thasion.

72. ISTRiA. Day and night sun.

73. " Rev. Hawk on a tunny ; Istrie.

74. LvKiA. Apollon, olive wreathed, bow and quiver.

75. " Rev. Lyre from tortoise-shell, name in square.

76. Zeus on an ass, holding vase, dove in a vine, dog.

77. Abdera, Thrace. Griffin (eagle and lion).

78. Demetrios. Ceres with phallic symbols.

79. ^Nus. Goat, altar, and inscription in sunk square.

80. Lion killing a bull. Alexis. Leontopolis.

81. BizvA, Thrace. Emperor IMarcus Julius Philippus, Au-

gustus ; head olive wreathed.

82. " Rev. Asklepios (Aesculapius), Apollon, Hygeia, and

Telesphoros, altar with serpent. Fortune and Zeus above.

83. ^-Enus. Goat looking back.

S4. lo AT Canopus. — Bourbon Museum 91

The word lo denotes in Greek the brilliance of the moon, and there-
fore the same as Isis, the honied o/u\ as in tlie engraving. The myth
relates that Zews loved her and jealous Juno changed her into a heifer.

The new moon and red heifer wore syinl:)ols in Jewish worship. Sev-
e]-al horned divinities are figured in pi. VII, Cabint:t Seerr/.
 List of Illustrations. 429
No. Page.
85. Discord on Olympos —Poussin 91

86. Bakchik Procession — Ovid Met 102

The god Bakchos in a car drawn by leopards. He carries a ttiyrsos,

and is crowned by vine leaves. His attendants dance, blow trumpets,

burn torches, drink wine, and Seilenos is borne drunk on a braying ass.

Crowds of people in the windows, doorways, and elsewhere look on.

87. Rhea. Ceres. —Pal. Royal. 105

88. x\phrodite Dancing. — Gal. des Peiiits 105

To the music ofApoUon, and the lively attraction of Eros, the gods
and goddesses engage in the mazy dance. Aphrodite, Hermes, Her-
akles, and a winged Victory.

89. Ganvmedes and Eagle. — Mas Boiir. 115

90. Angel, Child and Demon —Bour. Mus 115

Coins. British Museum, Worlidge, &c 117

91. Ptolemy, ram's horn.

92. " Rev. Isis on a column inside an inscription.

93. Young Herakles seated on a lion's skin, club, column,

bow and quiver.

94. Demetrios. Head diademed, bearded.

95. " Rev. Kybele on a goat.

96. Katanion (Catania). Arethousa, olive leaf and wreath.

97. Abdera. Grififin. Sop in field.

98. Baal head on a Phoenician coin.

99. Leontopolis. Lion killing a bull.

100. Svrakosion. Arethousa, hair banded and netted, ear-

ring, tunnies and Syrakosion in the field.

10 1. Medousa. Antique gem from Worsleyana.

102. Philippus. Horse bearing boy with palm branch ; vase.

103. Demetrios. Head in lion's skin.

104. " Rev. Victory.

105. Egypt. Horus in a flower.

106. Bakchic Ecstasy. —Rom. Campana 121

See \ 70, 74.
430 List of Illustrations.
Ni>. Page.

107. llAUBO AND Ceres. —-Gal. des Feints 121

Baubo was one of the names of the night goddess Ceres was the ;

mother earth. The two meet at Eleusis to mourn for Kore Persephon-
hia, the grain that was sown ; that is in Plouton's dominions.

Coins. —Am. Num. Soc. and Br. Afiis 127

08. Thunuerholt ; king Antiochos I. See '^^

183.

09. THL'NUERiioLT ; king Alexandres J

olive wreath.

10. Thuxderkoli' ; Ptolemy Epiphanes.

11. Sf.leukos I. Elephant with bull's horns.

12. Antiochos VI. Elephant carrying a torch.

13. Lampsak.^s. Horse ending in a fish tail.

14. A'elia. Griffin with lion's head.

15. Chios. Griffin, \ase and bunch of grapes.

16. CuM.t:. Arethousa, earring, waved hair.

17. '•
Jic'i'. Shell, mouse and inscription.

18. CuiLK. Shell, side and hinge end.

19. " JicT. Skylla ; woman and two dog heads, dolphin
tail and shell.

20. PHffiNicLA. Vaga. ;\Ian attacking a lion.

21. " Rev. Cow suckling a calf.

22. Alli!;,\. Head with olive wreath.

23. " Rev. Skylla, two dog heads and two swans.

24. SvHARis. Athena in horse-tail helmet.

25. " Rev. Cow looking backward.

26. Phienicia. Acre. Head of ruler in dotted border.

27. •'
Rev. Prow of ship Phoenician incription.

28. TAREXit •^L Horse with wings, a fish tail, and shell.

29. " Rev. Taras on a dolphin, disk, wreath, shell, fish

and trident. Scrolls for water.

T,o. (BIOS. Woman headed sphinx, and vase.

 1

List of Illustrations. 43
No, Pace.

131. I'HiT.xiciA. Cock and her pheasants 127

132. ' Rev. Hfad of ruler with diadem and inscription:

Caius Papilius Mutilius, General of the Samnites.

133. Ph(Kxicia. Rev. Bull on a crocodile. Insc. below.

134. Mauritania. King Masinissa : inscription, bird, wreath

and altar.

135. Phunicia. Rev. Lion killing a bull ;

palm branch.

136. Poseidon. Marble group 131

See Eng. No. 3, 320.

Coins. —Br. Mus. and Am. Num. Soc 135

137. Janus. See S i34-

138. Ephesus. Diana and Deer, bow and branch.

139. SvRi.\. Antiochos VI., rayed crown.

140. " Rev. DiosKOUROi mounted ; olive wreath.

141. K,4MARINA. Bull with man's face. Meaning the sun in

the underworld.

142. Thurion. Bull butting ; lion's head below, eera.

143. Tortoise. Eretria.

144. Paljiyra. Three Kabeiroi (Cabiri).

145. Etruria. Eagle's head.

146. Two Sphinxes. On a coin unnamed.

147. Ptolemy. Head of king with diadem.

148. " Rev. Ptolemy Soteros (savior) in a circle; also an

and mint mark.
eagle, date

149. Syria. Antiochos Soteros (savior) in dotted border.

150. " Rev. Zeus, or ApoUon, seated Antiochos Soteros.

151. Krotona. Tripod, serpents, scroll (for water) border.

152. Rhegium. Lion's head, flames for mane.

153. Etruria. Head with polos.

154. Aic-E. Ram's head.

155. Leontinu.m. Lion's head ; four barleycorns.

 —
432 List of Ilbistrations.
No. Page.

156. Phcexicia. Tripolis, Kastor and Polydeukes, olive dia-

dem and stars, in beaded border 135

157. " Rev. Ceres with cornucopia and staff; inscription,

(money) of the Tripolitans. The sacred and free city.

158. Sybaris. Bull on a fish.

159. Philetairos. King of Pergamos, olive wreath.

160. " Rev. Pallas crowning name of king, bunch of

grapes. Goddess seated ; shield and bow.

161. Alexander the Great. Engra\ing one fourth size of

the original gold coin.

162. " Rev. Bellerophon killing the Chimaira.

163. Seleukos I. Head with cow's horns.

164. Bull of India. — JMoor' s Paiitlieon 137

Colossal stone bull ; Tanjore pagoda, India.

165. LiNGAJL Moor' s Pantheon 137

Brahn:ia, bull, lingam, Ganesa, Prajapati. iScc.

166. Theseus, Ariadne and Minotauros. — Boiir. Mas. . . . 141

The myth of the Minotaur says At the prayer of Minos Poseidon
:

sent a bull by whom Pasiphse became mother of a composite monster

like Echidna, Orthros, Geryon, or Kerberos, called Minotauros. He
was shut up in the labyrinth made by Daidalos in Crete, where the
Athenians fed him with \-oung children, until Theseus, aided Ity Ari-
adne, killed him. The monster is the miasma, who is slain bv the sun.
The Minotaur signifies the savage passions which our nature contains.
The thread which .Vriadne gave to Theseus is the divine mind in us.
The labyrinth the obliquity and variety of life (Taylor from >l\"mpi- (

odoros). " In this monster we see (Jsar-Hapi of Egyq.it, the Calf of

Sinai, the Bulls of Jeroboam, the >iIolekh (Moloch) of Syria, the Ha-

mon of Kart-hada, the Melikertrs of Korinthos, the Palaimon of Ten-

edos, the Laphystios or Clutton-Zeus of ,\los, the mythic Ph.alaris of
Akragas, who feasted on children (Aristotle), the burning Talos, the
giant of i:ironze of .Sardinia, and Dionysos the raw-flesh-eating. The
child-devouring .Minotaur was probably an idol of brass with a human
figure and bull's head (Movers, Phonizier, i. ;i). Human sacrifice

has left ils traces all round the Mediterranean Sea. See Diodorus,
IV . 76, and .Strabo, X. 4.

167. EuROPii. Palais Royal 141

Sec Eng. No. 177.
 List of Illustratious.
433J
No- Pa,.,:.

1 68. Herakles, Tf.lephos and Deer. — Boar. Mas 144

Telephos, the far-shining, is son of Aleos the bUnd and Aiige the liril-

liant,and he was exposed on Mount Parthenion, wheie he was

suckled by a doe. He went to Delphoi to learn who was his mother,
and was sent to Teuthras, king of Mysia, where he met his mother
who did not recognize him, and is offered her for his wife. It is the
story of <3idipous and lokaste repeated with little variation. Her-
cules prevents Telephos from killing his mother. Telephos is the
dawn.

169. Bakchos and Ariadne at Naxos. — Boitr. JSTiis 144

Theseus on his way to Athens abandoned Ariadne in the island of
Naxos, where Bakchos found her. Another legend says :
" Beautiful
Ariadne, daughter of Minos, whom Thestus was conducting to the
sacred Athens, was slain by Artemis in Sea-girt Dia (Xaxos) through
the testimony of Dionysos." In the Theognis we read, " Dionysos
Chrysokoraes (the golden-haired) made the blond-haired Ariadne,
daughter of Minos, his spouse, and for him Kronion (Zeus) made her
immortal and e\'er young.'' The word is Greek Ariagne and means
Very Holy. This was a favorite subject with ancient artists, .\riadne
was daughter of ilinos (son of Zeus) and the all-brilliant Pasiph;e
(mother of the Minotaur).

170. Marsyas Teaching Olympos. — Boiir. Mus 147

The myth says Marsyas found the reed pipe that Athena thre\v awav
for fear its use would spoil her beauty, and challenged .VpoUon with
his lyre to a trial of skill. He failed and was skinned by the god.
See Eng. No. 213. He is here teaching the young Olympos the use
of the pipe. This was a favorite subject among ancient artists, and a
group in marble was found at Herculaneum which is much broader
in suggestion than this, and represents Marsyas as a satyr. See Cab-
inet Secret^ pi. II., also Eng. No. 178-

171. Pan and Ero.s. — Boiir. 2/its 147

Pan is a satyr who is master of the reed and pipe music, and he is the
purifying breeze, called by the Hindus (Sanskrit) pavana, by the
Latins, Favonius and Faunus. He is the gentle wind, the soft

zephyr. When the wind whistles among the reeds by the riverside
it is said Pan makes love to Syrinx (reed).

172. Herakles Stealing Oxen. — Gal. des Pciiit.': 152

The oxen and sheep are clouds, and are the property of Eurvtos, the
Kentaur (cloud), are set to keep them, when Herak-
whose daughters
les (the sun) them by dispersing the vapors. Eurytos and
steals

Autolykos taught Herakles to shoot with the bow and to wrestle.

These names denote the light and splendor of morning. Since the
sun disperses the clouds in the daytime the oxen may have been hid-
den in a cave of light, for intense light obscures, and the myth says the
434 Li^i of Illustrations.
No, Page.
oxen were hidden in the cave of Cacus, whom Herakles killed with
his club and liberated the cattle. Others say the cave of Cacus is the
dark thundercloud. Then the club of Herakles is the lightning.

173. Car of Juggernaut. — (Jaganauth). Photo 152

Formerly drawn in religious processions of India, when fanatics lay
before its wheels and were crushed. It is now laid up by order of
the English Government at Streeveliputur, in the Presidency of Ma-
dras. It is decorated with hundreds of large and thousands of small
carved figures in wood, of gods and monsters and ornamental objects.
.See " 120.

174. Zeus of Pheidia.s.—Bour. Miis 155

175. VouNt; Zeus and Eagle. — Bour. Miis 155

176. Satyr, Aphrodite and Eros. — Gal. dcs Feints 159

177. Europe. — Palais Royal 159

Daughter of Agenor, King of Phcenicia, and of Telephassa. Pindar
said Europe is daughter of Tityos the giant, who was killed by an
arrow of Artemis, and condemned to work like Ixion, Sisyphos, Tan-
talos and Prometheus. Europe means the splendor of the morning,
seen first in the purple-land, Phoinikia (Phrenicia). She is the dawn
borne across the blue heaven by the lord of the pure ether (Zeus), who
assumed a bull's form. Kadmos and Telephassa (far-shining) search
for her all the long day. Telephassa died in Thessaly, and Kadmos
was told at Delphoi that his search is in vain. The beautiful being
who gave such great pleasure toall who beheld her will no more be

seen. She became mother of Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthus

by Zeus in Crete. See Eng. No. 167.

178. Marsyas and Olympos. —Bour. Mus 164

Mars}"as is one of the most noted of the Satyrs, who animate forests
and groves and make the branches of the trees dance to the wild
music of the winds, while the clouds whirl in the air above. The)-
are companions of Dionysos, lord of the wine-cup and of Herakles,
the burly heedless giant. After the storm has passed the stillness is

called the sleep of the Satyrs.

179. Kentaurs and Kentauresses. —Bour. Mus 167

Those trwo groups were drawn from two silver vases now in the liour-

bon Museum at Naples, Italy. The figures are finel)- designed and
wrought with exquisite skill. In the upper group the Kentaur bears
a I1i\rs()s and a pine cone ; in the lower a pine branch is in its place.
The Kentauresses each carry a lion's skin over the arm. The beau-
tiful lamps aboxe, neai the border of eggs and spear points, are for

two lights each.

 — : ;

List of Illustrations. 435

No. Pagk.
iSo. Kentaur and Eros. —Roman Mus 171
When Ixion in pride attempted to seize Here the bright queen of the
air, Zeus placed in his way the mist-maiden Nephele, and the Ken-
taur was born. The sun at high noon calls out the clouds which
move like horses across the sky. They are the Gandharvas of the
Vedas.

t8i. Fortune. —Bourbon Museum 177

Tyche or Fortune is the notion of blind chance, scattering favors with-
out heed to the needs or deserts of any one. Another view is that
she directs human affairs more or less as she may be propitiated, and
so she is represented with a rudder in one hand and the horn of
Amaltheia in the other. She also stands on a globe or holds one in her
hand to indicate her power over its affairs, when she is properly one
of the fates (parete, Eumenides). Many other titles are given her
Akraia (wealth bringer), and Agatha (the good). The separate head
shows a peculiar style of dressing the hair.

1 82. The second figure holds a rudder and cornucopia (horn

of Amaltheia), and bears on her head an Isis form of or-
nament or emblem.

I S3. The winged figure bears a palm branch and seems float-

ing in the air. This was a later ideal.

184. The Boar That Killed Adonis. — Ovid. Atet iSo

The boar was the biting frost that kills the spirit of the fruits and
flowers, the beautiful Adonis whom Aphrodite loves. When he is

brought before the warm summer he melts and dies.

1 8 c;- Ganymedes. — Gal. dcs Pcints 183

Ganymedes was seized and borne aloft by the Eagle of Zeus. The
myth means the act of fructifying nature, attended by Power and Wis-
dom. Pindar said Ganymedes was a mighty genius who caused the
overflowing of the Nile by moving his feet. He is Atys, Adonis,
Bakchos, or Zeus himself in a new disguise. Speaking of a certain

needlework, Virgil says :

" There Ganymedes is wrought with living art.

Chasing through Ida's groves the trembling hart

Jove's armor-bearer bird in open day
With crooked talons bears the boy away."

He is the morning light carried to heaven on a bright tinted cloud.

Hebe was to be the wife of Herakles.

186. Ganymedes on Olympos. —Palais Royal. 183

Banquet of the gods in the distance. Ganymedes is the immortal
cup-bearer to the gods — the rain-cloud.
436 List of Illustrations.
No. \'\<.E.

1S7. Death of Adoms. — Oviit. Met 1S6

Adonis, Tammuz, Atys is the spirit of fruits and flowers who is killed

by the biting frost, the boar. The summer, Venus, warm and loving,

must have iVuit and flowers, therefore Adonis is brought to life again
every spring. In the myth Adonis is in the underworld, as Perse-
phone is, a part of the year, and in the region of light the other part.

188. Prometheus and Vulture. —Palais Royal 1S9

Hesiod says Prometheus is a son of the Titan lapetos, and his brothers

are Epimetheus, Atlas and Alenoitos. -Eschylus says mankind were

hopeless in savagery until Prometheus stole hre from heaven and taught
them its use. Hesiod sa^s that men began to live in a golden age
which was followed by a silver age, then a l:)razen, and we are now in

an iron age. The owed his throne to the e-xertions

poet also says Zeus
of Prometheus, but when he befriended man with the gift of fire Zeus
became angry and punished him by causing a vulture to gnaw always
at his liverwhich is renewed every day. Tortures and death have no
lasting power over him, for he is delivered b)- the bright and lovely lo,
and his release brings Zeus to humiliation. Zeus had punished him
for teaching man the use of lightning and fire, and so awakened their
senses, providing them with comforts of life, teaching them how to
plow and build, to cross the sea and open mines, and so Prometheu>
became the second creator and preser\^er of mandkind. His son
Deukalion was another restorer of mankind, after the mythical flood.

189. Venus and AV(.)unded Adonis. —Pal. Royal 189

The Summer-Heat (\'enus) mourns for the frost-bitten flow'ers and
fruits (Wounded Adonis).

190. Bakchos, \'ine, and Tiger. — ]Vorship of Priapiis 193

See description in paragraph 1 26, and also in Richard Payne Knight's
Worship of Friapiii.

191. Apollon. — Unknown antique 196

This statue in white marble was found in 1505 near the harbor of
Antium, Italy. It is supposed to be a copy of a bronze because of the
form of the cloak. The left fore-arm. the ftngcis of the right hand,
and small parts of the leg have been restored. Its name, the Pythian
.Apollon, was given from the action which is the instant after sending
an arrow through the great serpent, which means that the sun's ray>
have pierced the dark morning clouds. It is also called the A]iollo
Belvedere from its location in that garden bv Pope Julius II.

Coins. — British Aliiseuin 19S

192. Chimaira. SegestK. Lion's head and body, goat's
head from the back, and serpent tail.

193. " Rev. Dove in an olive wreath. The word chimaira

in Greek means a \ear old goat, and also means winter.
 List of Ilhistrations. 437
N.I, Page.

194. Bull on a coin of Magnesia 198

195. Camarina. Young Bakchos with bull's I'lOrns ; fish in a

circle of scrolls or curved lines of water. See *^\ 157.

196. " Rev. Aphrodite on a swan, curved and crescent

lines of water ; fish, kam. See ^ 157, and Note 586.

197. Antiochos I.

198. " Rev. Apollon on egg-shaped basket; bow and arrow

and Pegasos at his foot. King Antiochos.

199. Gela, Sicily. Man-faced bull ; gelas above.

200. Athena. Skylla and griffin on helmet.

201. Phcenicl\. Head of Ceres with wheat ears in the hair.

202. " Rev. Horse, palm tree and Phoenician letters krka,
for Karka, the name of a city.

203. A(jRiGENTUJL Two cormorants on a rabbit. See Note

392-

204. Akanthus. Bull with lion's head. See ^| 158.

205. Leontini. Lion's head; mane as flames.

206. Phienicia. Head (of king) with helmet.

207. ' Rev. Isis with rays and necklace, mlk (melek-king)
LEPD.

208. Agrigentum. Cormorant on a serpent, akragantinon.

209. " Rev. Sea-crab, starfisli, and fish below.

210. Agrigentuinl Cormorant, akraciyntos.

211. " Rev. Sea-crai! ; Victory below.

212. Herakles between Vice and Virtue. — Gal. des Feints 202
This composition has a double meaning : the choice of a young man
between truth and integrity, or of deceit and craft ; and the mythologi-
cal in which the sun chooses his way among dark or light clouds as
he goes across the heavens.
 —

438 List of Illustrations.

No- Pace.
213. Apollon Skinning Marsyas. — Gal. dcs Feints 202
In the contest between Phoibos and Marsyas the prize was awarded
by Minos to the satyr when the god doomed the umpire to wear ass's
ears as a punishment. His servant discovered the secret of the ears,
and unableto keep it, whispered it into a hole in the ground. A reed
grew up from the place and repeated the words to the winds who
scattered the news to all the world. On a second trial the victory
was given toApoUon, who skinned Marsyas for presuming to contend
with him in music. The meaning is the sun and wind produce
;

superior music to that made by the rushing winds in the dark hours
of night.

214. Apollon. —Rom. Miis

Meleager. 205

215. Diana drawn by Nymphs. — Gal. Pdnts ties 211

As though the moon was drawn by clouds or stars.

2 1 6. Diana returning from a hunt. Palais Royal. 211

Diana is said by one poet to have killed the hunter Orion in Ortygia,
while another said she killed him accidentally, having aimed at a
mark on the sea which Phoibos said she could not hit. Asklepios
tried to raise him from the dead, and Zeus struck the healer with a
thunderbolt. In this picture the goddess has other game fruits, one —
of which the rustic in a hat is tasting. See Cabinet Sctret, pi. No.
xx.xii.

217. Pi.ouTGN AND Kerberos. — Ro?n. M/IS 21S

Plouton and Serapis are similar ideals, but not identical. Plouton is

also Ais, Hades, Aidoneus, Polydegmon, the king of the underworld,

and Zeus Katachthonios, the unseen king who can make himself and
others invisible. The cap on his head is a sign of that power, and is
the tam-kappe or nebel-kappe of Teutonic legends. As Plouton, the
richest of all monarchs, he is like Kuvera of the Ramavana. Poseidon
built the ^\'alls that enclose the realm of darkness, ''
the land of the
and the gates are guarded b)- Kerberos, the fearful
great majority,"
dog with three heads. This monster is said to have belonged to a
terrible brood : Hydra, Chimaira, Geryon, Orthros, and Sphinx, who
arc children of Echidna and Typhon, and are ideals of the hurricane
and llashes of lightning \vhich precede a fall of rain. Geryon has
two heads. Hesiodos gave Kerberos fifty hiads, and Horace calls
him the hundred footed beast. The Kg\ptians called him tl'ie Dog
of Typhon. and in their astronomv Kcrl)crcis takes the place of the

Great Hear. See Engraving No. 45 for a curious iigure of Kerberos.

Coins. — Duteiis 221

218. Va(;a, Hercules and lion's skin. Sun hot at noon. He

holds the lion by the tail and swings his club. A^aga.

219. " Rev. Cow suckling a calf. Phcenician letters vo(;a.

 List of Illustrations. 439
No, Page.
2 20. Perga ill Pamphylia. ApoUon with olive wreath and
quiver 221

221. " 7?("'. Artemis with spear and myrtle ; deer. Inscrip-
tion, Artemis of the Pergaians..

222. Syracuse, Sicily. Arethousa ; hair as flames, fish swim-

ming meet at the end of the nose ; shell under chin ;

SVRAKOSION.

223. " Rev. Horse head, palm branch, Phoenician letters.

224. Triquetra on a coin of Sicily.

225. Four Seasons. Hadrian coin. Inscription, Happy

times.

226. Gaza, Philistia. Saturn on a winged horse (Pegasos?)

ending in a fish tail ; fish below in water of waved lines.

227. " Rev. Owl with Isis emblems in circle of dots.

228. Antiochou Epiphanous Dionysous.

229. " Rev. Elephant carrying torch in trunk and the horn
of Amaltheia (cornucopia) in the tail. Inscription,
(money) of King Antiochos the Illustrious, Dionysos.

230. Etruria. Wheel of four spokes.

231. " Rev. Wheel of four spokes, three dots, G and leaf

232. Etruria. Vase with serpent coiled around it, two

handles, cover ; between the two stars and caps of the
Dioskuroi. Inscription, v/Elia.

233. Delphos. Egg-shaped altar with serpents coiled around

it, on a pile of loose stones, dividing the word del-
ph-on.

234. Triquetra. With one wing on a coin of Sicily.

235. Seilenos on an ass, holding a two handled cup ; dove

on a vine, and dog under the ass. Mende in Make-
donia.
 ——

440 List of Illustrations.

N,i, Page-
236. ScARAB/Eus cut in dark hard stone. Sacred emblem of
Egypt. The Cut is one quarter size of the original 221

237. " Rc'7'. or back view with inscription in hieroglyphs.

(Seyffarth) " The governor of the people, lord of both countries (up-
per and lower Eg}'pt), king, crusher ;
justifier ; chosen of Amen, the
.strong one, the crusher of the wicked. Glorifying the kingdom, the
whole offspring of the Lord (Amen), Master of the Lands ; Amen's
favorite, the splendid (Siii-SHA-NK), the fervid, the deliverer of life,

the destroyer of malefactors."

238. Neapolis, Italy. Man-faced bull, forepart ; star and

vase. Curved lines for water below.

239. Neapolis. Bull between two fish. See ^| 97.

240. Ram.\. — Asiatic Rcscarclics.

Hindu god. The source of being and cause of destruction, Upen-
*'

dra and Mahendra the younger and the elder Indra (Muir)." Name
in Sanskrit below.

241. Brahjia. — Asiatic Researches.

The self-existent principle. He is generated from the great mundane
egg, in whichhe manifests himself. Both created and uncreated.
Mahadeva created Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra, and is the Priapos of
India. (Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part IV., p. 27), Name in Sanskrit
below.

242. Krishna. — Asiatic Researches.

" Krishna of the Yadava race, son of Aditi, called ^'ishnu, younger
brother of Indra. -\s the son of Nanda, the bull, he is called Go-
vinda. Krishna is the god who transcends all, the minutest of the
minute, the vastest of the vast, the gi-eatest of the great." Krishna is

made to say " I am both priest and victim ; and righteousness

(dharma) present and past, the creator and annihilator of the aggre-
gate of existences." Name in Sanskrit below.

243. (j-NNESA. Asiatic Rcsearclies.

Eldest son of Siva (fire) and Parvati (mountain goddess); god of pru-
dence, policy, and wisdom, and in Japan also of marriage. Al.^o

called Pollear, and compared with the Latin Janus.

Coins. —Br. Mkscidii 229

244. .Alexander. Head of king in elephant's skin ; cegis.

245. " Rev. I'ai.i.as Athene armed, eagle, and (money) of

.Alexander alex.vnai'ov. Mint stamp.
246. Makonic.a, Thrakia. Fore part of horse between two
globes ,; .mai' (dxea).

247. '•
Rev. Ram's heah in a dotted sunk square.
 List of Ilhistrations. 441
No. Page.
248. PopULONiA. Chimaira, with goat's head at the end of
the lion's tail 229

249. Metapontum. Ceres, soteria (Soteria) Savior.

250. " Rev. Wheat head and meta (pontum).

251. Abdera, Thrakia. Griffin.

252. " Rev. Artemis, deer, bow, and branch ; polykrathe,

Polykrates.

253. Maronea. Horse with Kanthar on his back, maron

(EA).

254. " Rev. Vine in a sunk square; in the border,

EPIMEDROTO.

255. Crete. Head of Ariadne, diademed.

256. " Rev. Dog between two tunnies, apeion.

257. Thrakia. Dikaia. Head of king or Herakles, with

lion's skin.

258. " Rev. Sunk square.

259. Malta. Headoflsis; of the Maltese, barley.

260. " Rev. Osiris with four wings, crook and whip. See

H 223.

261. Krotona. Cormorant on a stool.

262. • Rev. Tripod with three ring-handles: shell.

qpot(onaj, for Crotona.

263. Cyprus. Paphos. Image of Aphrodite in the center,

dove over each wing of the temple, and one in the paved
court ; KOINON KYPRION. Money of the Cypriotes.

264. Amphipolis, Thrakia. Head of Apollon, olive wreath.

265. " Rev. Lamp burning in a square, and in tlie border

amphipoliteon.

266. Tyche, Fortune, draped figure, rudder and horn of Amal-

theia.

267. Selinus. Pallas.

26S. • Rev. Cock and Sun. .\ovino.

 —
442 List of Illustrations.
No. Page.
269. Tripoli. Apollon with quiver 229

270. " Rev. Europe on the Bull ; tripoleiton.

271. T.^RENTUM. Taras on a dolphin ; curls or scrolls for

waves. TA T.

272. " Rev. Taras on a horse.

273. Syracuse. Head of Arethousa, olive branch on hair;

hair plaited and waved in front ; earrings, necklace of
pearls. Four tunnies in the field, all swimming one
way. SYRAKOSION (money) of the S3Tacusans. Struck
by Gelon, 485-478 B. C.

274. " Rev. Chariot and two horses driven by a boy, Vic-
tory flying above, lion springing belovi'.

275. Isis. Moor' s Pantheon 233

The goddess of fecundity and consort of Osiris, tlie sun, and therefore
the moon. The Greek lo, the homed one (See Eng. No. 85). Iris
and Osiris were the parents of Horus, the Egyptian ideal youth, or
savior, represented as Har-pi-chru-ti, the Horus-child, in Greek
Harpokrates.

276. Mars. Ares. —Rom. Mus 237

A Latin god, at first worshiped as the softener of tlie earth and rip-

ener of fruits and grains. In later time the Greek Ares was the per-
sonified storm-wind and was added to the Mars ideal who then was
called the god of war.

277. Plouton and Other Deities in Hades. — Cartari . . . .

243

278. Nemesis. — Cartari 243

The word nemesis means righteousness, and it is said her nature and
duty is to see that good and evil are more evenly distributed among
mankind. She is also called Adrasteia, the being from whom there
is no escape. Hesiodos says she is the daughter of Night (Leda) and
sister of Helen and Apollon. Pausanias sa)s a statue of her at

Rhamnus in Attica was esteemed the finest work of art in marble ex-
tant. After Alexander's time she was represented with Avings.

279. Kore. —
Cartari 243
The secondary or female principle in nature, called the daughter, In t

earth Kore, but in Hades Persephoneia (Proserpine). The personifi-

cation of heat, the preserver and destroyer ; the cause of fertility and
of fermentation. She is sometimes drawn with a veil on her head.
See Engraving .\o. 52, p. 156, in 77/f Eleuxiiiian and Bacchic Mip-
tcries (Bouton, 1891). Sec Note 259.
 List of Illustrations. 443
No. Page.

280. Kybele. — Cartari 243

See Note 420, p. 169.

281. Mars, Ares. — Gal. des Feints 249

Mars the ripener speeds over the grain fields from the equator north
and south at the rate of about twelve miles a day.

282. Victory. — Unknown artist 249

The recently discovered antique marble statue of a winged Victory,
life-size, was an event of great importance in the art world. It was
mutilated as shown in the view.s when found. The general action is

like that of other ancient figures of Nike. It is one of the finest

pieces of sculpture remaining from the ancient w^orld. Sylla raised a

temple at Rome in honor of Nike as the daughter of the giant Pallas,

who was said in the Latin legend to be father of Minerva (Athena).

Athena and Nike are sisters.

283. Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan. — Ovid Met. .

255
Herodotos says the Skythians worshiped Ares as patron of corn and
cattle, and gave his figure a sword, one of the forms of the Hindu
Linga. As such he was father of all living things, Marspiter, or Mas-
piter, the Romulus and Remus. As the ripener
parent of the twins
and grinder of grain he is Pilumnus and Picumnus, the god of bakers
(Breal, Herculus et Cams). Mars is also the god who crushes with a
thunderbolt (Miiller).

284. Minerva. —Rom. Mus 258

The Latin name of Athena, Pallas, Max Muller connects the word
with the Greek menos, and Sanskrit ananas, mind. The purely intel-
lectual Minerva is a more majestic idea than the Plellenic Athene.
The myth was not expanded.

285. Zeus. — Gal. des Feints 261

286. Athena Pallas. —Antique 261

Recently discovered this figure of Pallas is full of interest. Archaic
in style and workmanship, but rich in emblems of the great goddess.
The horse-tail helmet has a sphinx of extra large proportion ; the
necklace is of serpents and brooch a Medousa head. Her right hand
supports a small winged victory, and her left rests on the edge of a
shield, on the inside of which is a large serpent, and on the outside is

a winged Medousa head.

287. Farnese Vase. —Bour. Mus 265

Sardonyx, eighteen inches diameter. Was presented to the Museum by
Elizabeth Farnese, wife of the Bourbon King of Naples. The subject
is the prosperity of Egypt, The country is represented by the young
woman reclining on the sphinx and holding up two heads of wheat.
Two other young women on the right, with a cup and a horn are
444 ^^^i of Illustrations.
No. Page.
daugliters, the delta. .'\ farmer is in the center standing. The old
man on the left sitting against a mulberry tree and holding the horn
of plenty, is Father Nilus, and overhead are the winds.

288. Medousa's Head. — Bou7-. Miis 265

This is on the reverse side of the Farnese Vase. The Gorgons are
the three daughters of Phorkys and Keto, Stheino, Euryale, and
Medousa. The Gorgo of the Odyssey is the liideous head of a mon-

ster belonging to tlie underworld, and in the Iliad she is a being with
an awful face and a terrific glance ; as said in the myth to look on the
head of Medousa will change the beholder to stone. The Gorgons
are the storm-clouds that fly across the night sky. Darkness is a
swallower, a devourer. The night has a bright head, the moon,
which can be cut off. So the Medousa combines beauty and hideous-
ness, a beautiful woman with snakes for hair (Cox). Robert Brown,
Jr., says " the petrifying stare of Medousa is the moon-glare on the
darkness, when the color, sound, and motion of the world of day have
gone." See Note 684, and coin No. 27, page 42, Perseus cutting off

Medousa's head.

Coins. — B)-. Ahis 271

289. Bactria. Head of King Eukratidcs.

290. " Rn\ Dioskuroi, mounted, spears, palm branches, caps

and stars. Inscription Eukratides the Great King.
Mint mark.

291. Etruria. Wheel with si-\ spokes.

292. " Rev. (below) Vase with two handles in two rings.

293. Etruria. Ausculum. Wheel.

294. " Rev. Wheel, five dots in a group.

295. Calenus. Cock and Sun. A.

296. Popuhinia. Devil-fish.

297. Ci'M.E. Head of king diademed.

298. " Rev. Cornucopia with flowers. Name of citv.

299. PosEiDrtNiA. Poseidon advancing with trident. Name,

300. " Rei'. is the same die incused.

301. Curious Idol found in Thibet.

302. lhn;Ri.\. Head of king ; helmet with wings ; fish.

30;,. " Rev. Composite; man's and hog's heads.

 — — —
List of Illustrations. 445
No. Page.

304. Aphrodite ; olive wreath and diadem ; hair in flames,

border of serpents: field dotted with crescents 271

305. TuD^, Umbria, Italy. Dog sleeping.

306. Skylla. Man with three dogs, and two lish tails.

307. A'f,L-4. Lion over flames ; barleycorn above.

30S. CuM.E. Head with Petasos and olive wreath.

309. " Rev. Skylla; woman, three dog heads.

The mythical skylla work then- will among storm-beaten rocks and
charybdis in the awful whirlpools (Cox). The Seirens bask on the
rocks among the sunlit waters and lure mariners by their singing to
shipwreclv and ruin. They are half women and half fishes, daughters
of Echidna and Melusina. .Skylla is daughter of Phorkys and Keto,

and sister of the Gorgons, Harpies, Kentaurs, Titans, Graiai, and

Phaiakians.

310. CH.4R0N. jMoiitfaucoii 275

" The gaper," " the all-swallowing," and similar epithets denoted the
imaginary boatman who was supposed to ferry souls over the river
which was said to separate the living from the dead. The fable was
adapted from the Egyptians, whose dead were ferried over the Nile,
or over an artiticial lake near each great temple, in a boat of a pecu-
liar shape to represent in a crescent form the female principle. The
Greeks added that an obolus (2 cents) and a golden bough must be
presented to Charon without which he refused passage. Poetically
Charon is the all-devouring darkness of night, which swallows ever}"
living thing in time and restores none — except Herakles, or some
other sun-god.

311. Isis. jMoiitfaucoit 277

With cow's horns and ears, rays, vail and necklace. The emblem in

the forehead denotes the female principle.

312. Tripod. — Montfaucon 277

Copper. .Serpent coiled with head rayed ; ram's heads on the legs ;

semicircular basin ; tiger or leopard's claws for feet ; two cocks

below.

313. Canopus — Causeus ... 277

Egyptian water jar with emblems of humidity.

314. Venus emblems on a coin of Cyprus. Br. Miis 277

315. Bacchantes and Fauns. — Boiir. AFiis 2S1

These three groups are from Pompeii, and are samples of a large
number of similar designs. Graceful and charming in form and sug-
gested motion these pictures were valued accessories to the luxurious
decorations of a Pompeian palace.
446 List of IlliLstrations,
No. Page.
316. NEREin AND Hippocampus. — Boiir. Miis 285
The N't^td-ids are said to be daughters of Xereus {the wise old deity of
the deep calm sea) and of Doris, and to be fifty in numbers, whose
names are given by Ovid i^Works and Days). The most noted are
Amphitrite, Galateia, Dynamene, Pherousa, Proto, Kymodeke, words
denoting dwellers in the waters, their powers, strength, office or
abode. For other pictures of them see Cabinet Secret, pi. xxk, xlix,
and below.

317. Nereid and Sea M(")Nster. —Bour. Mus 285

Seldom has the imagination been exercised on a more beautiful or
more harmless subject than the lovely beings who comfort Prome-
theus in his agony and with Thetis cheer Achilleus when his heart is

riven with his grief for his dead friend Patroklos. Each fountain and
lake, river and marsh, well, tree, hill, valley : in short, every portion
of the world was said to have its guai'dian Nereid, who was always
employed in good deeds.

318. Pan and Goat. —Roman Campana 289

The reed pipe of Pan, the harp of Orpheus and the lyre of Hermes
are variants of the idea that all the gods are cheered by the music of
the winds set in motion by the sun among the reeds, the trees, or

elsewhere. "Pan is the purifying breeze." He is the child of the

morning, rests at noon and rages if disturbed. He is said to be son
of Hermes and the nymph Dryops
or of Hermes and Penelope, or
;

of Odysseus and Penelope, or of Ouranos and Gaia, or finally, of

Aither and a Nereid. He had goat's legs and feet and small horns,
and was full of laughter and play.

319. Aphrodite on a Goat. — Causcus 289

Intended to exhibit the reproductive principle in nature. See \ 191,
1'}^^ and Notes 115 and 749.

320. Poseidon and Amphitrite. —Bour. Mns 293

Poseidon was said to be wiser than Apollon (Iliad xxi.), and to have
mysterious wisdom and prophetic powers. Jupiter (Zeus) and Aido-
neus (Aides, Hades, Plouton,) were brothers and sons of Kronos.
The world was divided among the three brothers, Zeus having the
heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Aidoneus the underworld. He was
supreme king of the waters, including humidity in all its forms. Even
the " walls of Troy " were his, /. <^., made of his mist or cloud. He
was said to love I>emeter, the earth, and their children are the
woman and the horse, and many others, almost innumerable, the re-
sult of the union of water and earth (and hfe). The wile of Poseidon
is Amphitrite, who is pictured as dwelling in the lowest depths of the
sea, riding on the white crested billo\vs, her horses, and alwa)'s pres-
ent at the birth of Apollon. In the (Jdyssey she is the sea, purple-
facfd and loud-sounding. Sometimes called Salatia, the sea. Stc
Eng. No. 348.
 —— —
List of Illustrations. 447
No, Pace.
321. Mars and Venus. Bour. Mas — 297
A pictorial union of summer heat (Venus) and the ripener of grains
and fruits (Mars).

322. Venus and INIars. —Bour. Mus 297

323. Hermes drawn by Cocks. Gal. des Feints 303

The sun rising causes the soft breezes to blow.

324. Kadjios and Hermione. — Ovid Mdamor 303

The myth of Kadmos says his grandfather was Phoroneus (iire-bearer),
and his grandmother was Kerdo (clever), or Peitho (persuasion) : his
father was Agenor. King of Phoenicia, and mother Telephassa (far-

shining), and his sister Europa, who was carried away to Cyprus by
the bull (Zeus). The search of Kadmos and Telephassa for the lost
Europa is the long journey of the sun across the heavens from east to
west.Kadmos is then no other than the sun. The myth credits

Kadmos with bringing 1 6 letters of the alphabet to Greece, to which

Simonides of Ceos added five, and Epicharmus the Sicilian five more.
He is said to have killed a dragon who had devoured many of his
men, and sowed his teeth which grew up armed men and fought as is
said in the Argonantic story, only Athena helped instead of Medeia.
Ovid says Kadmos and Hermione were changed to serpents, at their
own request, because of the jealousy and persecution of Juno.

325. Siva, Parvati and Bull Nanda. — PJioto 507

326. Hindu figure of the ripener (Kybele) 307

327. Boxer. A very superior figure in bronze found in ex-

cavating ancient ruins in Rome, Italy. Lanciani 307

328. Zeus smiting the Titans. Bour. Mus 313

Engraved from a very fine cameo in the Bourbon Museum. This sub-
ject has been reproduced in one fonn or another more times than any
other work of art of its kind. The Titans are the great powers of
nature, Arges, Steropes and Brontes, the three Kyklopes, are the dazz-
lingand scorching flashes which plow up the storm-clad heavens.
These are explained by S. P Andrews to be the Static, Motic, and
Dynamic forces (circles) in nature and the twelve Titans are as in this
;

table :—
I, 2, Kronos and Rhea Time and succession.

3, 4, Themis
Japetos, and .... Motion and direction.

Twelve 5, 6, Hyperion and Theia. . . .Aboveness and beneathness.

Titans 7, 8, Okeanos and Tethys .... Water and mistiness.

9, 10, Koios and Phoebe Quality and negation.

II, 12, Kreios and Eurybia. ..Power and extension,
or Mnemosyne Memory.
Zeus also contends with the hundred-handed monsters, called fleka-
 —— ——
44^ i^^^^ ^if Illustrations,

No. Paor.
toiicheircs. These and the Titans are the giants who cannot be
killed 1-Hil only reduced to slavery as the workers in the laboratory of
nature.
Other powers engage the mighty Zeus ;

I Atropiis. Past Remorse ]

,, ^ Lachcsis Present Despair \ Necessity.

tates
I
Klotho Future Foreboding

I Allekto 1 r Hatred.

P .. J Megaira \ Eumenides -| Jealousy.

Tisiphone j
Revenge.
The Forty Harpies Slander.

329. Marsvas seated. Boiir. Miis 313

330. Sculptor at work. Boiir. Mas 313

331. Daedalus and Icarus. — Bour. Mus 313

Daedalus is the cunning workman, the unequaled smith in metals, the

solar artificer, the Sun himself, and Icarus is another Phaethon, in a

new attempt to make fame on his father's reputation. Daedalus
made the labyrinth in t.'rete for the Minotaur, and wings of wax for

his ambitious son. See Ovid, Met. VUI. 3.

332. Leda and Jupiter as the Swan. Palais Royal. 316

Leda i.s the night, the mother of the gods, and by her Zeus became
father oftwo pairs of twins at one birth as shown in the picture. ;

From two eggs were born Helen and Pohdeukes, and Klytaimnestia
and Kastor. This is a poetical view of the origin of the human race
which is as near the tiuth as any other.

I^-^. Theseus and Kentaur. — Palais Royal 319

Theseus is said to be a great solar hero, a child of Aithra, the pure
air, or according to another poet, son of Poseidon, or of Aigeus. Ai
geus denotes the dash of waters on the shore, so he is Poseidon.
Theseus is the core of a double account, the mythical god, and the
Attic hero-king. The god does a number
of great deeds, more or less
like those of Hercules, which repeat the account of the war of the gods
of hght, Indra, (Jidipous, Herakles (and Theseus) against the powers
of darkness, X'ntya, Ahi, Sphinx, ^:c. In the enemies overcome Ity

Theseus Sinis Pityokamptes is a robber ; that is to say, the storm-

wind is an obscurer of the sunlight. Phaia, the .sow of Krommyon
{l)oar of Erymanthos, Chimaira), is the dense fog on the clift ; Skei-
ron, the monster who hurls travelers from the clifis is the fierce wind ;

Kerkyoii (Kerkopcs), who kills l>y wrestling is probably the whirl-

wind, and as the whirlwind is the child of the son and air, it is the
story of Laios, or Akrisit)s, or AmuUus, or other beings who destroy
their children. In Alopfi the story of Auge, Scmele, Danae is re-

pealed. The robber Piokroustes (Procrustes) is the hammerer, the

beater, the heavy wind with rain or snow. Theseus and Kentaur is
 —

List of Illustrations. 449

Nil Pace.
sun and cloud. The king-life of Theseus was full of adventures.
His father was Aigeus (/Egean Sea), who married Medeia the wise
woman, who aided Jason. He had labors to perform before his
father would recognize him. He killed the minotaur of Knossos,
aided by Ariadne, and abandoned her in Naxos later the minotaur ;

is the pestilence which devours young men and maidens ; the sun
dispels pestilential miasma. Thucydides says Theseus consolidated
the Attic Demoi into one Athenian state, improved the laws and i-uled

with success and honor. Theseus, the mythical, is the enemy of

Amazons (as were Herakles, Achilleus and Bellerophon), and they
were dark clouds. Antiope, stolen by Herakles, became the bride of
Theseus and mother of Hippolytos, who is the reflexion of the sun in
water ; Phaidra, wife of Theseus, is the gleaming, and loves Theseus,
and also loves Hippolytos, who is killed but raised to life again by

Asklepios. Theseus was one of the company in the Argo to recover

the golden fleece, and in the hunt of the Kalydonian boar, and in the
war of the Epigonoi at Thebes, and he made an excursion into Hades,
from whence Herakles rescued him. The chief Lykomedes of Sky-
ros hurls Theseus the old, decrepid, deposed king of Athens from a

cliff, and the sun has set.

334. Mercury. Hermes. Lantin 321

The inventor of music and song. The myth says he made a lyre in
his infancy of a tortoise-shell and seven sheep-gut cords. Feeling
hungry he stole fifty cattle from the pastures of the gods, and kindled
the first fire that warmed the earth on the bank of the Alpheios river

he cooked and ate two of the oxen. For his success in this enter-

prise Phoibos named Hermes the Master Thief He is the twilight

who obscures (steals and hides), but he is also sound, and so Hermes
is the whispering breeze of the early morning or evening. In the
evening he is Psychopompus, the guide of souls from this to the un-
seen world. When he drives the clouds across the heavens he is the
messenger of Zeus and all the gods. He is the god of boundaries,
guardian of gymnasia, and patron of gymnastic games. His staff
had magic powers, even to raising the dead to life. The early figures

of Hermes were without wings, which in the later statues were at-
tached to his cap and sandals. In Egj'pt he was Anubis.

335. Judgment of P.\ris. — Gal. dt-s Feints 327

Paris in the Greek myth is the son of Priam, the last kiug of Troy,
and of Hekabe (Hecuba). He was exposed on Mount Ida, rescued
and reared by a shepherd. He married (Enone, daughter of the river
Kebren. He is said to have been the most beautiful of men. The
poets say he seduced Helen, wife of Mcnelaos, the Greek, and so
caused the war of Troy. The decision by which he gave the apple
to Venus (.\phrodite), when Juno (Hebe) and Minerva (Athena) were
competitors was .a favorite theme of many poets and artists. The
story is : All the gods and goddesses, except Discord (Eris) were in-
vited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. In revenge Eris threw
 — ——
450 List of IlltLstrations.
ti" Page.
an apple (orange, quince, or j^omegranate) into tlieir midst, inscribed
" For tlie most beautiful (woman)." Juno promised ])iiwer to Paris,

Minirva glory in war, and \^enus the most beautiful woman for wife,

and Helen was bis reward. Aphrodite is the embodiment of the

lo\cliness of the dawn. Paris is theHindu Pani, darkness personi-
fied ; the cheat and thief who steals away golden treasures (Helen),
the bright and beautiful tints of evening. The ten years siege of Troy
are the ten hours of night before the gold and scarlet clouds appear
again in the east, sunendered by Paris at the fall of Troy. The Argo-
nautic voyage for the recovery of the Golden Fleece (bright morning
clouds) is only another myth to explain the phenomena of victory of
light over darkness.

336. Nereid on a Sea Monster. Bour. Miis 333

337. Aphrodite. —Bour. Mus 333

Aphrodite, Himeros, Pothos and Eros, wafted by the gentle zephyrs
over the sea. That is Longing, Desire, Attraction, and Love attend-
ing the pleasant Summer Heat. See Note 847.

33S. A'ase with the ship Argo. Bow. Mus 337

The Argonautic myth rises like the dawn in the far east where Iswara
Arghanautha, the Hindu Dionysos, is Lord of the divine ship which
in lireece bore the Achaian heroes from the land of darkness to the
land of the morning. A\'Tierever tree and serpent worship prevailed
the cultus of the Phallos and the Ship,, the Linga and the Yoni, with
the worship of the sun was found also. Every civilized peoplehave
had this cultus in one form or other at some stage in its histor}'. See
Tr,-i- and Serpent IVors/iip, (Bouton). In no other people has this

myth been developed into so highly poetical and beautiful a form as

the Greeks- The final conception was of a lost treasure, the Golden
P'leece, recovered. This was the thread of the legend and on it they
strung a great many minor legends about the heavens, and light,

clouds, waters, winds and darkness. The number of the Argonauts

was fifty, like the chilchen of Danaos and Aig)'ptos, of Thestios and
.Vsterodia. Orpheus was invited for his harjj whose sweet tones no
living thing can resist, and he is the only one who can surely pilot the
ship -Argo on this perilous voyage. The ship was endowed with the
pow cr of understanding the thoughts of men, and the gift of speech.
Before the start Orpheus sings of all events from Chaos to the present.
It is the story of the return of the sun, Jason, to the east, where the
golden fleece, the bright morning clouds, is recovered and brought
again to the west, to Greece, where the myth says it still remains hid-
den away from mortal eyes.

339. ]'uss,.\. Bor/,}//;;' s Bnvrs of Life 34°

The Hindu ideal figure of the universal mother, Kwan-Von. The
water)' principle in matter. The Queen of Heaven, Lady of Bounty,
(loddess of a Thousand Arms, are a few of the many titles. She sits
 ; 1

List of Illustrations. 45
No. Page,
on her lotus throne under her lord, Il'u, Thi-an, or Zi-anu, and both
are contemplating the creative energies of nature, the chief emblem of
which is the womb. " This is a most perfect ideograph of a religious
ideal," an arcanum of mytholog)'.
and is See | 221. In India she is
called Alaut,and the Lady Isani Kybele in Greece and Rome, and
;

Disa in Germany and the north Mut in Egypt, and in all countries
:

she is now the Holy ^'irgin, Mater Dolorosa. See 1 192.

340. PiCUS. — Ovid Alctainorphoses 344

Picus and his wife Canens were notable for many good qualities ; he
for his great personal beauty and his love of horses, and for a kindly
disposition. These and other parts attracted the love of the Dryads
of the hills of Latium, Naiads of the fountains. Nymphs of the Tiber
(once called Albula), and of many other rivers and localities. But to
one nymph only was he attracted, the daughter of Ionian Janus, the
sweet singer Canens. ^Vhen Picus hunted a boar in a wood where
Kirke gathered herbs for her magic spells, she saw and loved him,
and invited his attentions. He refused and she changed him into a
woodpecker (Latin picus). Ovid makes Kirke say to Picus " By ex-
perience thou shalt learn what one slighted, what one in love, what a
woman can do —and that woman Kirke." Compare Shakspear's
" Hell has no fiercer fiend

Than woman scorned."

And for another example See Introduction to Cabinet Secret, the plate
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife.

341. Ariadne in Naxos. — Botir. Alits 347

See Eng. No. 166.

342. Xereid on a Hippocampus.— Gal. Feints des 353

343. Nereid on a Sea Monster. — Gal. Feints dcs 353

344. —
Ganymedes. Moor's Pantheon 357
345. Leda, Swan and Eros. —Bourbon Museum 362
A very beautiful composition from Pompeii, which is a fore-runner of
the picture No. 332, in time, as that represents the sequence of this.

The fructifying seed is provided with wings in many departments of

nature ; the pollen of flowers, of grain, of trees the seeds of many
;

trees, and wings are supplied by birds and bees. Leda is the ideal of
motherhood —the universal mother. The myth says she was mother
of the Dioskouroi and Deianeira, the brightest and the gloomiest of
beings ; and of Helen the treasure of the Argonautic expedition, the
most lovely and tenderly beautiful tints of morning or evening cloud

and of Klytaimnestra who murdered her husband Agamemnon ; of

Apollon, the sun god, and as she is Leto or Latona, the Night, she is

the great womb of nature out of which came and now come all ani-
mated beings. Eros holds a jar containing four eggs ; the artist sup-
plied an egg for each of the four children shown.
452 List of Illustrations.
No.

346- Poseidon and Amphitrtte. —Bour. Afiis 363

Libyan pantheon. Called by the (h-eeks Zeus Poseidon. Is not >.ep-
tune. Known also as the " earth-shaker " or producer of earthquakes,

and " rain-bringer," and " gatherer of clouds," and " he who lets loose
the winds." The poets say, he struck his trident on the rocks of the
Akropolis (at Athens), and brought forth water (some say the horse
came out). See Poseidon, by Robert Brown, Jr., and Mythology of
Aryan A'ations, by Sir i). W. Co.\, also Eng. No. 320.

347- Cupid .\xi> Psyche. — MiDitfaticun 365

34S. Necromancer's Emblems. — From the middle ages 423
Pine cone, lizard, serpent, hook, dial, caduceus, frog, agathodaimon,
tortoise, disk, balances, flail, urn, Serapis-bust with modius, knife,
woman aud hawk, ram's head, tripod, sacred plant, woman and
child.